posted July 27,2006 on the AMAZON.com website
(this review is now "their property", so don't go sheistin' it! )

review: CHRONICLES, Volume 1
by Bob Dylan

HE MAKES ME AN EYEWITNESS

I like the way CHRONICLES starts in 1961 and then leaves there abruptly after the 1st chapter, fast-forwarding decades and coming back at the very end to provide at least *some* closure. This form leaves the reader with a sense of the relativity of time, an almost Joycean sense-to name a writer Dylan mentions at one point as having rather squandered his gifts.

At certain points in this book, such as when Bob is being signed to his first recording contract by the legendary John Hammond, I felt like an eye-witness to more than history-to that, yes, but with the added sense of experiencing things as they really felt in Bob's consciousness. I feel Dylan shares his epiphanies straight and true and with generousity. That sense persisted through much of the book which *is* a chronicle, of a few stories from a life that could surely produce at least a dozen sequels as thick as this one.

There were some places, though, where I just didn't get it. Dylan sometimes strings together adjectives or descriptions that remain completely opaque to me, or don't make sense in the context. For example, describes New Orleans in very positive images at some length, then says 'After awhile you start to feel like a ghost from one of the tombs, like you're in a wax museum below crimson clouds.' That doesn't sound so great to me!
A little later, Dylan devotes a number of pages to a conversation with an old man named Sun Pie who runs a souveneir shop in the bayou country. Sun Pie spouts a lot of stuff about how the Chinese are going to take over, and other things that make him sound like a complete crackpot. Dylan, though, asides near the end of their encounter, 'Sun Pie was inspiring...the right guy to run into at the right time, a guy who grooved on his own head.' About as inspiring as a dag barking, I thought.

But that's ok. I was sitting outside at a Burger King on this hot summer day drinking diet coke as I read, and this guy with silver reflecting shades on, who's been walking back and forth between here and the big gas station next door, noticed the cover asked me, 'Is that Bob Dylan's new book? '
'It's been out a year or two, ' I answered, 'But I never read it till now.'
'How is it? ' he inquired, and trembling with the living presence of mysteries about to be revealed on the very page I was reading there near the book's end, I replied in a voice of conviction and without a moment's hesitation: 'It's a great book! '