Expecting Rain

Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant (talked about them in the Flanagan interview from '09)

House Of Earth, the "lost" novel by Woody Guthrie, which was published this year. Dylan and Jeff Rosen are listed on the acknowledgement page as providing "smart feedback" after reading the manuscript.

I recently bought that book.

Whilst researching for my own, soon to be published, definitive opus on the man behind the radio hour, "Can You Cook and Sow? Make Flowers Grow - Bob Dylan and the W.I.", I came upon an interesting fact (pg.23, paragraph 3.) that Bob was reading "Walking in the Cotswolds." by Pauline Kearny (slowtraveluk&ireland). He was looking to find an answer to the age old question that he had posed. "How many roads must a man walk down?2

As Homer Simpson stated it is 7.

Has anyone read this book and can tell me if it is any good?

http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Village-Boh ... trausbaugh


(I hope it's the right topic, it's a sort of Dylan-related book, anyway.)

Woo Hoo.. Look what I got on ebay.

^
Nice one.

Here's supposed to be a list of books Dylan read (and in some cases quoted from), but never mind.

nice list

I'm sure Dylan is well-read. I don't think he would write as well as he does if he wasn't. Also, as eclectic as he is with everything, I very much doubt he stuck himself with only one kind of books.
However, some of the references in his songs might be just name-dropping: for example, "like Verlaine and Rimbaud's" on "You're Gonna Make me Lonesome When You Go", could be merely because their love affair is well known, and not because he read either of them. I would understand if he hasn't... I personally think I wouldn't enjoy their poetry that much if all that was available to me was a translation.

There's a very knowledgable post here on Bob reading Verlaine:
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=80276#p1483781

Thanks Johanna

I guess "Confessions of a Yakuza" is a fairly obvious one... And something by Byron.

(I just realized, in the SongTalk interview, Dylan wrongly attributes a Shelley poem to Byron... Has hell frozen over?...)

Funny as hell...

Since you're talking about Dylan talking, it's not clear which book Dylan liked or if he read said book.

I am not insinuating anything!

I'll bet Dylan's read Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me by Richard Farina.

He read Charles Frazier's Cold Mountain and Larry Brown's Father and Son in 1997 (the year both came out.) The former's imagery and ambience can be felt, (or at least I feel it), in certain parts of TOOM and Cross the Green Mountain.

He mentioned reading both in a chat during a break in an interview. The comments did not form part of the interview itself. As I was a tad obsessive in those days, I picked up on the comments and promptly read both books. Well, I'd have to have been obsessive to have known about the remarks in the first place, I guess.

Cheers, Scott, - I thought I had mentioned that he had read Frazier and Brown's books in Troubadour but that bit must have been cut, or I wrote about it somewhere else and just 'disremember' where....

She says "You don't read women authors do ya?"
At least that's what I think I hear her say
Well I say "How would you know, and what would it matter anyway?"
Well she says "Ya just don't seem like ya do"
I said "You're way wrong"
She says "Which ones have you read then?", I say "Read Erica Jong"
("Highlands")

He knows of it. I'll bet he's read it. But how has he read it ? There's a knowingness here, to my ears, confirmed, I think, by the not quite suppressed laugh in Bob's voice as he sings this. Fear of Flying" is a book that could be read "straight," in terms of a feminist novel of development, and manifesto for freedom of identity, but it could be read, alternatively or simultaneously, for its potentially salacious interest to the prurient. Bob's playing with both possibilities, to hilarious effect, in my hearing of this hypnotic lyric.