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Bob dylan songbook sale12/13/2023 ![]() It isn’t a book that takes time to clear its throat. It is - for better and, alas, worse - a special kind of bonkers. But “The Philosophy of Modern Song” has its own wild flavor. There is the meditation on the Brecht-Weill song “ Pirate Jenny” in his 2004 memoir “ Chronicles: Volume One,” and the music-themed reveries scattered through his mid-’60s prose-poetry experiment “Tarantula.” The closest model may be the monologues Dylan delivered on “Theme Time Radio Hour,” the Sirius XM show he hosted from 2006 to 2009. Readers of Dylan have encountered writing in this vein before. In any case, “philosophy” is a useful term, vague and baggy enough to accommodate the mix of music criticism, beat poetry, wolverine snarls and Lear-on-the-heath tirades that comprise the book’s 66 chapters about 66 songs. The book title feels like a joke at their expense, and, maybe, a jibe at the pointy-heads in Stockholm who awarded him the 2016 Nobel Prize in literature. For decades, Dylan has been laying boobytraps for his devotees, the Dylanologists who rake through his songs and scraps, seeking clues to the Riddle of Bob. ![]() It has a list price worthy of an opus, $45 - pretty steep for a volume that pads out more than one-third of its pages with, per the Simon & Schuster press release, “carefully curated photographs.”īut the title is also a wisecrack, too puffed up and self-important to be taken at face value. ![]() It asserts that the book is an important work, a tome that merits a place on your loftiest library shelf, up in the thin air where you keep the leather-bound, gilt-edged stuff. What should we make of the title of Bob Dylan’s new book? “ The Philosophy of Modern Song” is a mouthful, a phrase that puts on airs. If you buy books linked on our site, The Times may earn a commission from, whose fees support independent bookstores. ![]()
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