Chronicles

Volume One

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Chronicles

Written by: Bob Dylan

Narrated by: Sean Penn

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WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE

The celebrated first memoir from arguably the most influential singer-songwriter in the country, Bob Dylan.

“I’d come from a long ways off and had started a long ways down. But now destiny was about to manifest itself. I felt like it was looking right at me and nobody else.”

So writes Bob Dylan in Chronicles: Volume One, his remarkable book exploring critical junctures in his life and career. Through Dylan’s eyes and open mind, we see Greenwich Village, circa 1961, when he first arrives in Manhattan. Dylan’s New York is a magical city of possibilities—smoky, nightlong parties; literary awakenings; transient loves and unbreakable friendships. Elegiac observations are punctuated by jabs of memories, penetrating and tough. With the book’s side trips to New Orleans, Woodstock, Minnesota, and points west, Chronicles: Volume One is an intimate and intensely personal recollection of extraordinary times.

By turns revealing, poetical, passionate, and witty, Chronicles: Volume One is a mesmerizing window on Bob Dylan’s thoughts and influences. Dylan’s voice is distinctively American: generous of spirit, engaged, fanciful, and rhythmic. Utilizing his unparalleled gifts of storytelling and the exquisite expressiveness that are the hallmarks of his music, Bob Dylan turns Chronicles: Volume One into a poignant reflection on life, and the people and places that helped shape the man and the art.

Bob DylanSean PennSimon & Schuster Audio

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Sean Penn is perfect. He captures the essence of Bob Dylan's character. I just wish the book wasn't abridged. I wanted to hear more of this.

There is a lot of enigma surrounding Dylan but when he tells his story his personality is very straight talking. It doesn't destroy his mystique. It just means there is not pretense although you get the impression that Dylan is actually happy to destroy his mystique even if it is just for the heck of doing so. The counterculture protest movement was anxious to declare him as their leader, but Dylan was equally adamant not to go along. Here he paints a picture of him more intent on raising young children surrounded by toddler toys in his apartment while the counterculture crazies were banging on his door demanding that he lead them to an anti-war protest. To this, Dylan basically gave them the finger.

But mob pressures to dictate to Dylan were serious as he conveys here. It deeply angered him. Whether it was the folk music cult or the counter culture trying to hold him hostage to their cause, it ended up being their loss but also at a cost to Dylan too. The famous motorcycle accident ended up being used as an escape hatch to lie low until the winds started blowing in a different direction, but meanwhile everyone was deprived of what Dylan would have otherwise offered if they had not tried to suffocate him.

I recall being at Woodstock and thinking that Dylan lived just down the road, but did not agree to come and perform. I could guess at the reason, but I understand it more after having read this story.