Product Description

Bob Dylan's ways with words are a wonder, matched as they are with his music and verified by those voices of his. In response to the whole range of Dylan early and late (his songs of social conscience, of earthly love, of divine love and of contemplation), this critical appreciation listens to Dylan's attentive genius, to his apprehension of deadly sins and his comprehension of living virtues, all alive in the very words and their rewards.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #576659 in Books
• Published on: 2003-09-25
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 517 pages

Review
A gifted poetry critic takes on the lyrics of rock bard Bob Dylan. Ricks (Humanities/Boston Univ.) has penned tomes on Milton, Keats, Eliot, and Tennyson, but he has long been fascinated by Bob Dylan: His 1984 essay "Cliches and American English" was a much-lauded textual reading of the singer-songwriter's work. In this ambitious and intellectually freewheeling work, Ricks takes a full-length look at the poetic and moral underpinnings of Dylan's songs. Selecting tunes both well-known ("Positively Fourth Street," "Lay Lady Lay") and obscure ("Clothes Line Saga," "Handy Dandy"), Ricks analyzes them lyrically and structurally in terms of their relationships to the Seven Deadly Sins, the four virtues, and the three heavenly graces. This approach is sometimes strained, and some of the songs don't sustain the author's thematic scrutiny. Ricks nonetheless proves to be a lively and learned guide through the sometimes-daunting thickets of Dylan's compositions. He is especially astute at picking apart the musician's rhyme schemes and turns of rhythm, and he is an especially lively and (surprisingly, for an English poetry scholar) playful guide through the mechanics of the work. A chapter doesn't pass without some deft and amusing allusion to other pertinent numbers in the Dylan canon. But the author is less skilled at discussing the meaning and moral weight of the songwriter's oeuvre. Unlike most Dylan pundits, he completely eschews a biographical reading of the texts; while that might open the door for a fresh consideration, Ricks's interpretations often seem too open-ended and airless. The reader-especially one with a nonacademic bent-may ultimately wonder for whom this was written. Its length, intellectual density, and plentiful citations of poets both ancient and contemporary will probably put off all but the most devoted Dylan enthusiasts, while poetry buffs will likely ask themselves if a musician, even one of Dylan's caliber, is worthy of something as weighty as this. A diverting and occasionally revelatory stroll through a master's work, but one that will have a difficult time finding an audience. (Kirkus Reviews)

About the Author
Christopher Ricks is Professor of the Humanities at Boston University, and the Co-director of the Editorial Institute. He was formerly Professor of English at the universities of Cambridge and Bristol. He edited the standard edition of Tennyson, and the unpublished poems of TS Eliot. His books include Milton's Grand Style and Keats and Embarrassment, He lives in Boston and, during the summer, in Gloucestershire.

Customer Reviews

The expected treatment from Professor Ricks
The reviews have been negative, but I, being an American university student, had already pre-ordered my book from this site, and, by the time i saw the reviews, could not change that. not that i would want to. I am acquainted with quite a lot of Dylan scholarship-- Michael Gray's "Song and Dance Man", various biographical treatments, as well as the multi-faceted "With the Poets and Professors" (Muldoon's poem makes the book worth it), as well as some other studies of the lyrics-- as well as some of Professor Rick's work (The Force of Poetry, Essays in Appreciation). Of course, I am a massive Dylan fan with over 100 discs in my collection. Aware of the forces that were about to collide in this book (Dylanology, serious literary scholarship, and Dylan's lyrics), I had some idea of the outcome. Perhaps that is why I am so much less disappointed (not disappointed at all, from what I have read) of the book than the reviews have been. Dylan's Lyrics, I believe, demand close-attention. Dylanologists seem, on the whole, quite poor at bringing this attention to the words. Whereas they assume Dylan's work is poetry, they make scarce efforts to demonstrate it's internal merits, too often bandying comparisons with Rimbaud, Keats, Ginsberg, Milton etc etc etc. Where they pay attention to Dylan as a man, to the historical contexts of the songs, and, sometimes (but barely) to the music itself-- and this they do typically in florid descriptions of instrumentation--they fail to bring a sole devotion to the lyrics themselves. Which is what must be done if Dylan's lyrics are to be considered literary, in any sense. Christopher Ricks, qualified more than all but a few others in the English speaking world to flip out cheap comparisons with the canon, does not do this. He treats Dylan's lyrics as literature by actually treating them. He stays with the words. With a wit, verve, and razor sharp mind that can sew as well as cut, he shows that Dylan says all that fans always knew he had to say, but couldn't manage to rationally point out. William Empson, one of Ricks' heroes, discussing mood, a feature of pop/rock music that many would consider its dominant appealing factor, says mood is worthless if it cannot be analyzed. Ricks shows that the unique mood Dylan established record after record stirs the stomachs of thousands of fans for a reason. Even if we don't know how to say what that reason is.
Reviews have complained that Ricks ignores the politics, the biography, the times, the music: but for readers of Christopher Ricks, this is not news. Ricks performs the task that somehow has been ignored when looking at Dylan, but which was the task that established so many literary figures as great before the advent of modern cultural studies: close-reading.

The book is a firecracker in itself: entertaining, bristiling with puns, shameless allusions, fantastic digressions and possibilities-- these all make it worth reading, Dylan fan or not.

What the negative reviews missed was that the book does what has not been done, and that Christopher Ricks, more than anyone writing criticism can do well, look eye to eye at the words of the songs.

Imaginative and Imaginary
Christopher Ricks is very well known for taking Dylan seriously as a poet and this is the long awaited product of many years of reflection. The basic idea of dealing with Dylan's corpus in terms of sins, virtues and graces is imaginative and promises a well structured and coherent work. Ricks' approach is clever and almost obsessive in searching for hidden meanings. It is the sort of obsession that Dylan himself finds futile and at which he frequently gets angry in interviews. There is great emphasis upon word-play and word association, and a great deal of reference to what a particular line in a song reminds the writer of in a poet like Shelley or Wordsworth. His approach, while very like that of Gray's, is much more sophisticated, but nevertheless slightly irritating at times because it says more about the cleverness of the author than it does about the subject of the book. The interpretations are idiosyncratic and largely imaginary, but nevertheless executed with grace and charm. I found Dylan and Cohen: Poets of Rock and Roll very clear in its criticism of this type of approach, which I think the author of it calls the concordance approach to literary criticism. Boucher explains why you just don't ask of some songs what they mean, such as Losing my Religion by REM or Whiter Shade of Pale by Procul Harem, you just 'delight' in the images. Nevertheless Ricks' book is a must for Dylan fans and well worth reading.

Academic Big Shot With his Pencil In His Hand
After all the years that it has been promised to the Dylanophile, this book is a disappointment . The Professor has yoked his adoration of Dylan and his songs to a thesis that simply doesn't hold up. I guess that is the price you pay for being an academic in an ivory tower. The method of discussion veers from the witty to the strained, but, on too many occasions, there is a distinct sense that the Professor is showing off his vast literary knowledge. Does he really have to try to shovel all of his previous work on Milton, Keats and Larkin into a book on Bob Dylan? The prose of the Professor is inconsistent - the various chapters sound like lectures that have been transcribed from tapes, and while they might be fine to have punning or speculative asides in a spoken discourse, they do become somewhat tiresome when they come at you page after page. I wanted to like this book, but I felt deflated with the stodgy, glutinous writing. I would have preferred more of a close reading of individual songs in a more traditional literary critical mnner. Overall, this book has been a wasted opportunity.