Pick This Book Up: Sean Wilentz's "BOB DYLAN IN AMERICA"

For Christmas, for birthdays, I can count on receiving at least a few books as gifts. These are the hazards that come from having a librarian and an English professor as parents. Not that I mind most of my presents being books. Considering the great deal of pleasure that you can derive from a captivating read, I rather look forward to them, for they are typically gifts into which much thought has been put. About a half-hour ago, I finished Bob Dylan in America by Sean Wilentz, a gesture from parents who were obviously quite mindful of my fascination with Chronicles, Vol. 1 and No Direction Home.

Wilentz, a history professor at Princeton University, is supremely well-equipped to deliver a work that, "is chiefly concerned with placing Dylan's work in its wider historical and artistic contexts." It is a book that places prodigious amounts of evidence before its reader, all for the purpose of, "recognizing Dylan as an artist who is deeply attuned to American history as well as American culture." The degree to which Dylan's art is derived from a sweeping bevy of American cultural influences and homages has never before been so expansively supported and directly articulated. Wilentz illustrates that the depth of inspiration found throughout the tangled path of more than a half century of songwriting and recording runs far deeper, and is far more complex, than Dylan's oft-noted fascination with Woody Guthrie and the folk revival.

Sponge is a label that is quite regularly attached to Dylan and his penchant for drawing steadily from past performers and traditions, and it should come to no surprise Wilentz does nothing to dispel this notion. However, any negative connotations that the term carries are best swept aside when it becomes apparent that Dylan has borrowed from, and embellished upon, the rich expanse of traditional American music in a similar fashion to giants such as Pete Seeger and Blind Willie McTell. Here, Wilentz succeeds in portraying Dylan as not only America's greatest crafter of tune and verse, but also as a keen student of America's musical traditions and historical themes. Take away for a moment the name Bob Dylan from this book, and we are left with a musician whose genuine eagerness for knowledge spurs him to draw from the most obscure corners of our shared past, and through his artistry is able to forge that delicately forgotten kernel into a reimagined thread of Americana. Is that not something to marvel at?