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Page 22 THE SOUTHERN ISRAELITE November 28, 1986
Arts & Entertainment
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From Frankenstein to Foster
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by Joseph Cohen
Once while Bob Dylan was in
high school, his biographer Rob
ert Shelton tells us, he “donned a
Frankenstein monster mask” in a
lover’s lane, “and scared several
couples.” There are those among
us who. despite Dylan’s triumphs
as a pop-culture hero and a folk-
rock genius, still regard him as an
adolescent masquerading as a
monster—and vice-versa.
Certainly Shelton, in his flip,
hip, show-biz cum serious, over
written cotton candy book—it’s
a very large puff in the mouth—
“No Direction Home: The Life
and Music of Bob Dylan” (Beech
Tree Books/William Morrow;
$17.95) is not among these de
tractors. He worships Dylan, and
consequently this massive bio
graphy, though highly readable,
is in trouble from the start. That
is to say that while Shelton writes
well and has done his homework
in ingesting and regurgitating
Dylan’s chronology and musical
progress—in its reliance on oral
histories this book is the epitome
of vomitry—and in demonstrat
ing his (Shelton's) familiarity
with the serious poets, writers
and thinkers of the Western
World, the author’s need to thrust
the pop star into their midst and
justify his presence there turns
his book into a ludicrous, absurd,
and at times, a hypocritically
reckless venture.
One of Shelton’s techniques is
to take Dylan’s comments, many
of them inane, and sprinkle them
lavishly among a copious collec-
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476-8185
tion of epigraphs from ancient
and contemporary sources which
introduce each of the chapters.
Chapter three, for example, is
introduced thus: “Know thyself’
—Delphic Oracle. 6th Century,
B.C. “Digyuhself”—Dylan, A.D.
1961. This would be funny if you
didn’t know that Shelton was
deadly serious about it.
Far more sinister are Shelton's
persistent efforts to elevate Dylan
into the company of William
Blake, Rimbaud, Robert Graves,
T.S. Eliot, Buber, Camus, Sar
tre, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Homer,
Virgil, Shakespeare, Swedenborg,
Coleridge and Yeats. Failing to
make a distinction between mere
versifiers and true poets, Shelton
describes Dylan as “the brilliant
singing poet-laureate of young
American,” declaring on one oc
casion that four lines from Dylan’s
“ll Outlined Epitaphs” (“if it
rhymes,/if it don’t, it don’t/ if it
comes, it comes/if it won’t, it
won’t”) “can hold its own” next
to a “jazz-infused section” of Eli
ot’s “Sweeny Agonistes.” Another
time, Shelton says that Dylan’s
song “Desolation Row” “belongs
beside Eliot’s 'The Waste Land’
and Ginsberg’s ‘Howl’ as one of
the strongest expressions of apo
calypse.” Perhaps he’s right about
the comparison with “Howl,” but
as for “The Waste Land,” well,
that’s ridiculous.
Still worse is Shelton’s con
comitant attempt to foist off on
us the view of Dylan as messiah.
Surely, no one, besides Shabba-
tei Zevi. could he more lacking in
messianic requisites.
If Dylan doesn’t remotely re
semble the mythic image Shelton
wants to impose on us, who is he
and what is he? He was a nice
Jewish boy from Hibbing, Minn.,
who, while growing up, came to
hate his origins. Ashamed of his
parents and his middle-class ex
istence in Hibbing, the former
Bob Zimmerman cut his ties to
the past, changed his name and
left a vacuum where his identity
was supposed to be.
Though Shelton doesn’t say
so, I am convinced that the iden
tity vacuum is the great secret to
Dylan’s success. He could fill it
temporarily with any pose he
chose, and after milking it for its
topical value, easily discard it.
Though his most frequently as
sumed mask has been anonym
ity—the vacuum given a faceless
persona—his vaunted attractions
to the counter-culture, the Peace
Movement, existentialism, Israel,
the Lubavitchers, and his widely
publicized conversion to Chris
tianity were just so many other
masks, nothing more. For with
Consequently, his work has
always been derivative. For all
his influence, I doubt that he has
ever found his own authentic
voice, a discovery that is abso
lutely necessary to the making of
a true poet. Dylan’s capacity for
taking everything from others is
combined with an uncanny abil
ity to synthesize all that he has
heard, seen or read. These traits
have given him an image that,
however famous, is essentially
synthetic. It is this “talent” for
synthesizing that misleads Shel
ton into thinkingthat Dylan ranks
with the great poets. The truth is
that if you asked the real Bob
Dylan to stand up, he couldn’t
because there isn’t one.
I wonder what would have
happend to Dylan if he had ac
cepted himself and his Jewish
origins from the start. Many
famous stars did and some of
them have been widely respected
for being menschen. If Dylan
had chosen to live as a mensch
instead of a confused and harried
chameleon it’s just possible he
could have become both famous
and real. Stardom is ephemeral
and fame fades away. While some
of Dylan’s songs will be around
for a long time, and, indeed they
should be, he remains for me
something of a freak, a Shabba-
tei Zevi, a Frankenstein golem
who a century hence, I suspect,
will have become as dated as
Stephen Foster.
An Adventure in Shopping
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Mazel Tov
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