Throwback Thursday: Bob Dylan's Tarantula, Revisited

So, I decided to give Tarantula another chance this week. What prompted me was that marvelous scene in I'm Not There in which Cate Blanchett, as Dylan, is in in the middle of a hotel room with white walls upon which a giant tarantula in silhouette is crawling. It's an unforgettable scene. The book itself less so. And yet, it remains in circulation, in spite of itself.

Tarantula has been compared to Kerouac, Burroughs and Ginsberg (The Beats) and Rimbaud, but my first impressions upon re-reading it were James Joyce's Finnegan's Wake and Andy Warhol's proclamation, "Art is whatever you can get away with."

If I were asked when I first picked up a copy of this book I would have said it was when I was in high school in the 60s. The reality is that the book was never "officially" in print till 1971, proof that memory is a faulty and unreliable creature. So I must have been in college at the time. The cover was cool, and the title was cool. But the content? It depends on what lens you assess it through.

It wasn't till later that I became acquainted with Finnegans Wake, Joyce's 14-years-to-produce language game that made little sense to anyone and struck most common folk as a massive inside joke. Was it a joke on the readers or on his publisher?

So it is that Dylan produced a bit of prose here that was supposed to be something important. Was it also an inside joke? A joke on readers or on McMillan, his publisher?

What probably happened, no doubt, was that in 1966 Dylan had become such a hot commodity that anyone who published anything he wrote would be guaranteed a profit. A pitch was made, contract signed and the deal set in motion.

"Something's happening but you don't know what it is, eh?"

I dunno.

It's a book of historic significance only for the fact that Dylan wrote it, and it has an iconic photo on the cover (I already said that, I know). The back cover (of my copy) says this book "captures the tone and spirit of the turbulent times in which it was written."

Straight up, that's McMillan's marketing copy. His songs did, but nothing in this book really does that.

To capture the times I would suggest Dr. King's Letter from a Birmingham Jail, Eldridge Cleaver's Soul on Ice, Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five or Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Reading James Baldwin's The Fire Next Time is a bracing read as well, and no joke. Michener's Kent State is on point at the end of the decade.

Dylan's Tarantula was an insignificant blip on the period's literary scene and even less in retrospect. It's easy to imagine him saying, "I was funnin' you." Something akin to his 115th dream, though even there there's serious satire taking place. The rambling tripe on most of these pages seems to have no real aim other than to fill pages with ink.

Perhaps it could be said that this was a foreshadowing of Seinfeld, which was essentially about meaninglessness.

Here are the book's opening lines, after the initial chapter heading Guns, the Falcon's Mouthbook & Gashcap Unpunished.

aretha/ crystal jukebox queen of hymn & him diffused and drunk transfusion round wound heed sweet soundwave crippled & cry salute to oh great particular el dorado real and ye battered personal god but she cannot she the leader of whom when ye follow, she cannot she has no back she cannot ... beneath black flowery railroad fans  etc.

Alas. I'm sure there is some backstory on all this, of which I've forgotten or am unfamiliar. It doesn't really matter. Here are a few of the more critical reviews of this book on Amazon.

Three Star Review
If you need to read a review of this before you buy it , you must have no idea about Bob Dylan and this particular book. Investigate thoroughly before you commit. All Dylan fans will want to have it , whether they read it or not is up to them. I tried and couldn't really do it - but I had to "own" it.

Two Star Review
Dylan is by far the greatest songwriter of all-time and perfectly deserving of a noble [sic] prize in literature if ever one is bestowed upon him. However this stream of consciousness book is pure crap. It will be a highly collectible book if you have the first edition, first printing in good condition in about 50 years. Till then read Lyrics 1961-2001 or Chronicles vol.1 instead.

One Star Review
Is Bob Dylan now the pen name of a machine learning software fed hastily written assignments from a one hundred level poetry class? Tarantula is what the software produced.

One Star Review
I really couldn't make sense of this book. I am old enough to blame myself when this happens. I like his lyrics, but this book is unreadable. I wonder if he wrote it deliberately to mock those who say they get it. It is as if you hold up a toddler's doodle to art critic, who compliments it as some work of genius.

* * * *
On the flip side there are many like these five star reviews:

A Masterpiece
Spontaneous bebop prose poem. As with Naked Lunch, I can only absorb 10 pages at a time and then my head hurts gloriously. If you love Dylan, buy it, dog ear it, highlight, and rave.

Good book by Dylan when he was 23
I enjoy reading this as much as I did when I got my first copy in the early ‘70s. As dazzling as Bob’s music.

* * * *
It's probably significant that when you go to Bob Dylan Wikiquote, itself an exceptionally long Wikiquote entry, there are no quotes from Tarantula.

But that's OK. I own it, read it again and am happy to have it on my bookshelf. Do you have it on yours?

Flashback Friday: Everything Is Broken, A Dylan Lament

FIVE YEARS AGO TODAY

"It's nice to be known as a legend, and people will pay to see one, but for most people, once is enough. You have to deliver the goods." ~ Bob Dylan, Chronicles

Maybe one reason some people like Dylan is simply because of the durability of his career. Like the Energizer Bunny he just keeps going. Like the Cinderella Man he keeps coming back.

Yesterday I noted that John Hinchey called John Wesley Harding "the comeback of comeback albums." Others have hailed Blood on the Tracks as Dylan's great comeback, and it certainly was an exceptional album after the early Seventies period that produced the critically dissed Self-Portrait, Dylan and Planet Waves. When Dylan released Time Out of Mind in 1997 it was yet another comeback level achievement, winning a Grammy and receiving flurries of critical acclaim. His Never Ending Tour had been on the road nearly ten years, but now people were beginning to notice.

I don't recall many people calling his Gospel Period a comeback, though Slow Train Coming is a superfine album for its production values, cohesiveness and earnestness. Songs like "Serve Somebody" and "Precious Angel" are written in the old Dylanesque style but with a new born-again sensibility. You don't fake the emotion he conveys in "I Believe In You."

The comeback I wanted to talk about this morning, though, occurred in 1989 with the release of Oh Mercy. Rolling Stone gave the album high marks and I remember wondering if that was only because they're so predisposed to liking Dylan. Still, I bought the vinyl and continue to listen to it to this day.

Oh Mercy was hailed as a comeback, not just because it had songs noticeably more meaningful than anything Bob Dylan had recently released, but because Daniel Lanois' production gave it cohesion. There was cohesion on Empire Burlesque, of course, but that cohesion was a little too slick, a little too commercial, whereas this record was filled with atmospheric, hazy production -- a sound as arty as most assumed the songs to be. And Dylan followed suit, giving Lanois significant songs -- palpably social works, love songs, and poems -- that seemed to connect with his past. And, at the time, this production made it seem like the equivalent of his '60s records, meaning that its artiness was cutting edge, not portentous. ~Stephen Thomas Erlewine

In Dylan's Chronicle: Volume One, he devotes an entire chapter to this period of new fertility when Oh Mercy was birthed. Keep in mind that the book is only five chapters, so that's 20% of the book. The events of this time were important enough to dive into at length. 1987 was a difficult year because he's injured his hand in a freak accident that winter, and was scheduled to do 100 concerts beginning in the spring. It was also a difficult time because Dylan himself was not sure who he was. "There was a missing person inside of myself and I needed to find him."

Dylan states that he had not been writing songs for a while, but then the muse returned. He'd be sitting at a table and twenty-some verses for "Political World" flowed out from his pen. He placed these in a drawer, and they were soon joined by verses for a song called "What Good Am I?" More songs followed and he would see what their relationship would be to one another.

The reason I found Oh Mercy to be such a meaningful album is that it became clear that his "Gospel Phase" had not just been a phase. The heart of his spiritual experiences now seemed integrated naturally into a world view that was less about preaching, but true to a vision of how things are.

Another feature of Oh Mercy is that it is primarily slow songs, reflective and thoughtful songs. It's a nice album to put on at the end of the day when you want to unwind. The only two fast-paced pieces here are the kickoff opener, "Political World" and "Everything Is Broken". "Political World" just lays it out there, an indictment of how things work in our modern age. "Everything Is Broken" gets more specific. It's a "list song" on a theme. It's a broken world, "you'd better get that in your head." Perhaps formulaic stylistically, it makes a point.

This is not a new theme. It hearkens back to Hard Rain. It hearkens back to the Fall and humanity's exile from Paradise. And it implores us to be realistic about what we expect next.

Several songs give direction on this point. Don't catch the disease of conceit. Don't neglect the needy, forgotten and disenfranchised among us. And keep ringing them bells.

Everything Is Broken

Broken lines, broken strings
Broken threads, broken springs
Broken idols, broken heads
People sleeping in broken beds
Ain’t no use jiving
Ain’t no use joking
Everything is broken

Broken bottles, broken plates
Broken switches, broken gates
Broken dishes, broken parts
Streets are filled with broken hearts
Broken words never meant to be spoken
Everything is broken

Seem like every time you stop and turn around
Something else just hit the ground

Broken cutters, broken saws
Broken buckles, broken laws
Broken bodies, broken bones
Broken voices on broken phones
Take a deep breath, feel like you’re chokin'
Everything is broken

Every time you leave and go off someplace
Things fall to pieces in my face

Broken hands on broken ploughs
Broken treaties, broken vows
Broken pipes, broken tools
People bending broken rules
Hound dog howling, bullfrog croaking
Everything is broken

Copyright © 1989 by Special Rider Music

I love the summation in those last two lines: "Hound dog howling, bullfrog croaking, Everything is broken." Meantime, life goes on... Maybe we'll see you around the bend. 

Everything Is Broken

"It's nice to be known as a legend, and people will pay to see one, but for most people, once is enough. You have to deliver the goods." ~ Bob Dylan, Chronicles

Maybe one reason some people like Dylan is simply because of the durability of his career. Like the Energizer Bunny he just keeps going. Like the Cinderella Man he keeps coming back.

Yesterday I noted that John Hinchey called John Wesley Harding "the comeback of comeback albums." Others have hailed Blood on the Tracks as Dylan's great comeback, and it certainly was an exceptional album after the early Seventies period that produced the critically dissed Self-Portrait, Dylan and Planet Waves. When Dylan released Time Out of Mind in 1997 it was yet another comeback level achievement, winning a Grammy and receiving flurries of critical acclaim. His Never Ending Tour had been on the road nearly ten years, but now people were beginning to notice.

I don't recall many people calling his Gospel Period a comeback, though Slow Train Coming is a superfine album for its production values, cohesiveness and earnestness. Songs like "Serve Somebody" and "Precious Angel" are written in the old Dylanesque style but with a new born-again sensibility. You don't fake the emotion he conveys in "I Believe In You."

The comeback I wanted to talk about this morning, though, occurred in 1989 with the release of Oh Mercy. Rolling Stone gave the album high marks and I remember wondering if that was only because they're so predisposed to liking Dylan. Still, I bought the vinyl and continue to listen to it to this day.

Oh Mercy was hailed as a comeback, not just because it had songs noticeably more meaningful than anything Bob Dylan had recently released, but because Daniel Lanois' production gave it cohesion. There was cohesion on Empire Burlesque, of course, but that cohesion was a little too slick, a little too commercial, whereas this record was filled with atmospheric, hazy production -- a sound as arty as most assumed the songs to be. And Dylan followed suit, giving Lanois significant songs -- palpably social works, love songs, and poems -- that seemed to connect with his past. And, at the time, this production made it seem like the equivalent of his '60s records, meaning that its artiness was cutting edge, not portentous. ~Stephen Thomas Erlewine

In Dylan's Chronicle: Volume One, he devotes an entire chapter to this period of new fertility when Oh Mercy was birthed. Keep in mind that the book is only five chapters, so that's 20% of the book. The events of this time were important enough to dive into at length. 1987 was a difficult year because he's injured his hand in a freak accident that winter, and was scheduled to do 100 concerts beginning in the spring. It was also a difficult time because Dylan himself was not sure who he was. "There was a missing person inside of myself and I needed to find him."

Dylan states that he had not been writing songs for a while, but then the muse returned. He'd be sitting at a table and twenty-some verses for "Political World" flowed out from his pen. He placed these in a drawer, and they were soon joined by verses for a song called "What Good Am I?" More songs followed and he would see what their relationship would be to one another.

The reason I found Oh Mercy to be such a meaningful album is that it became clear that his "Gospel Phase" had not just been a phase. The heart of his spiritual experiences now seemed integrated naturally into a world view that was less about preaching, but true to a vision of how things are.

Another feature of Oh Mercy is that it is primarily slow songs, reflective and thoughtful songs. It's a nice album to put on at the end of the day when you want to unwind. The only two fast-paced pieces here are the kickoff opener, "Political World" and "Everything Is Broken". "Political World" just lays it out there, an indictment of how things work in our modern age. "Everything Is Broken" gets more specific. It's a "list song" on a theme. It's a broken world, "you'd better get that in your head." Perhaps formulaic stylistically, it makes a point.

This is not a new theme. It hearkens back to Hard Rain. It hearkens back to the Fall and humanity's exile from Paradise. And it implores us to be realistic about what we expect next.

Several songs give direction on this point. Don't catch the disease of conceit. Don't neglect the needy, forgotten and disenfranchised among us. And keep ringing them bells.

Everything Is Broken

Broken lines, broken strings
Broken threads, broken springs
Broken idols, broken heads
People sleeping in broken beds
Ain’t no use jiving
Ain’t no use joking
Everything is broken

Broken bottles, broken plates
Broken switches, broken gates
Broken dishes, broken parts
Streets are filled with broken hearts
Broken words never meant to be spoken
Everything is broken

Seem like every time you stop and turn around
Something else just hit the ground

Broken cutters, broken saws
Broken buckles, broken laws
Broken bodies, broken bones
Broken voices on broken phones
Take a deep breath, feel like you’re chokin'
Everything is broken

Every time you leave and go off someplace
Things fall to pieces in my face

Broken hands on broken ploughs
Broken treaties, broken vows
Broken pipes, broken tools
People bending broken rules
Hound dog howling, bullfrog croaking
Everything is broken

Copyright © 1989 by Special Rider Music

These Dylan-related blog entries of the past ten days or so are in preparation for his upcoming return to Duluth where he was born, year 25 of the Never Ending Tour. If I see you down on the Bayfront Tuesday, say hello.

To Save the World

"When people are ripe for a mass movement, they are usually ripe for any effective movement, and not solely for one with a particular doctrine or program." ~ Eric Hoffer

When I was really young, my brother and I used to make up games like these two, which probably lots of kids did. For example, when we were at our grandparents house, we'd try to get all around the living room without touching the floor. The floor, we'd pretend, was molten lava or some other deadly thing. In other words, to amplify the intensity of the game, there was a heavy price to be paid if you lost. It was a life or death game and we'd really get into it.

A second game was keeping a balloon or a ball in the air, or many balloons, by tapping them upward. Gravity would bring them earthward. The stake in this game was the end of the world. That is, if the balloon touched the ground, the whole world would be destroyed.

These memories were triggered by a discussion between two brothers in V.S. Naipaul's Magic Seeds. The one brother's life feels empty. He has no "cause." He wishes he had something to fight for. The second brother tells him to open his eyes. "There are causes all around you."

This is the idea behind Hoffer's statement above. People who feel their lives are small, who feel their lives are petty and meaningless, long for meaning. The childhood games we played as kids worked when we were kids, but as adults we know that the world will not blow up if the balloon touches the carpet.

What's especially intriguing is that both Naipaul and Hoffer seem to be saying that it hardly matters what the mass movement is. When conditions are right in peoples' hearts, there are a whole range of causes to fight, or even die, for.

Hoffer devotes a portion of his book, The True Believer, to the makeup of these people types . They are the disaffected, the poor, the misfits, the outcasts, minorities, adolescent youth, those in the grip of some vice or obsession, the bored and the sinners. They want to be free from feelings of isolation. They want to belong to something bigger than themselves. They want to give meaning to their lives.

Interestingly enough, three thousand years ago King David's first army was assembled from the disenfranchised in Israel. When Saul, Israel's first king, attempted to solifiy power by eliminating his potential replacement, David finally had to flee to the hills. He was joined there by others who were on the outs. In the book of Chronicles it says that, "Day after day men came to help David, until he had a great and mighty army." I used to think they followed David because he represented "right." Perhaps to some extent he was simply a galvanizing force that attracted the outcasts because many needed to belong to something. This is not to say that David was simply another mass movement, but that the Bible account corresponds with the way we'd expect people to behave based on what we know today about the sociology of mass movements.

In the world today, there a millions seeking causes, seeking meaning for their lives. To the degree that we are unable to integrate the poor, the lower classes into society, to give them hope of a better life by contributing to the community and society at large, to this very degree they are susceptible to alternative causes. Suicice bombers don't emerge out of nowhere. They come from the disenfranchised. What greater proof of one's passion for a cause than to give one's life for that cause...

What are the causes that matter to you? What is the meaning of your life? Think about it. Then go out and make a difference.

I’m Not There: My Prose and Cons

Disclaimer: I am a Dylan fan. Seeing this film was therefore obligatory.

The film I'm Not There was a freewheelin' take on another side of Bob Dylan, and another and another and another….

I have read half dozen Dylan bios and his Chronicles, own most of his albums, listened to the Dylan hour for years and still wasn’t sure what I thought about this film… OK, Dylan is enigmatic and it maybe makes sense to be enigmatic in telling his story. But did it have to be THIS enigmatic?

What follows then are my observations using Dr. Edward de Bono’s PIN method approach. That is, everything has a positive, interesting and negative aspect. If we get our analytical side awakened, it will help us avoid kneejerk reactions.

Positives
1. Cate Blanchett… not just the mannerisms but the script Haynes gives her is simply wonderful. She is actually hilarious at times, and profound often. I would love to hear what she thinks about Dylan after having played Dylan

2. In a movie that doesn’t play by the conventional rules of story telling you can potentially inject some really profound insights with new ways of seeing things that create memorable a-hahs.

3. The film offers serious insights about the culture of celebrity and the challenge of being a whole person when standing in the searing spotlight of Fame. >>> John Lennon’s recluse years come to mind here.

4. Dylan music throughout

Interesting
1. Funny line Cate Blanchett delivers when she asks “Am I the only one who has any balls around here?” Pure irony.

2. Truly original, non-linear film. Writer/director Haynes took risks to make this film in light of the challenges it would encounter in terms of mass appeal.

3. A Negro Dylan… That’s interesting. I do understand where that comes from.

4. Interesting how the different actors played Dylan.

5. I heard some criticism beforehand of Gere’s portion, but I had no such problem once you buy in. I’d seen Billy the Kid a couple times and, well, it is what it is.

Negative
My problems with the movie (which I watched twice in a row.)

1. The six characters had six different names, which made it a challenge to follow what purported to be a story line about a person.

2. The first character, Woody Guthrie (Dylan), mumbled lines that were hard to decipher and we missed things…. seems that if Haynes wrote the lines, they should be delivered in a manner that we can understand the words, even if we don’t understand meanings. This was the first character and it may have been intended to be comical, but it didn’t work. Interesting idea poorly executed.

3. For some reason I expected to see a linear story with a different character representing different eras in Dylan’s life. Instead the film is a shuffling together of his various personas in pretty much the same time frames, with the naturally difficult confusion.

4. No apparent storyline… which means the viewer is never really able to get lost in the film. Because it takes so much effort to figure things out it is too much like work and not really fun (until one gives up trying, and just goes with it the second time around.)

*****************************

This is definitely not a film for everyone. What follows are some excerpts from the IMDb.com reviews of the movie. The great majority were very positive, so you can go there to read them. I tack these on because they add some insight as to why I’m Not There pretty much failed at the box office, despite fawning reviews by the critics.

In "Chronicles, Volume One" Dylan dwells on the moment when he stumbled across Rimbaud's declaration "Je est un autre" which translates into English: "I is someone else". Dylan writes: "When I read those words the bells went off. It made perfect sense. I wish someone would have mentioned it to me earlier." That insight has sustained Dylan thru all his multiple personalities, finger pointing folkie, rock & roll rebel, Nashville good ol' boy (Oh me oh my, love that country pie), tormented lover, Born Again Christian. When he performed on his first album, aged 21, he was trying to summon up the voice of a 60 year old blues singer.

Nowhere in the film do we get a glimpse of the excitement that surrounded Dylan's emergence as an artist, or the kind of musical poetry that brought Allen Ginsburg to tears. While the film has some of the great Dylan songs, some sung by Bob and some by stand-ins, there is nothing deeply felt here and Haynes fails to capture the passion and inspiration of his music. Bob Dylan is not a series of archetypes or shifting faces. He is a poet, an artist, a musician, a man who had something important to say and said it in a way that articulated the built-up frustrations of an entire generation. In I'm Not There, in spite of the conceit of the multiple actors, there is only one Dylan - the shadow - masked and anonymous, not the man - vital and creatively alive.

Unless you know a lot about Bob Dylan and the context in which he lived - Vietnam War, folk music ... - you will be completely lost while watching this film. I went into it knowing virtually nothing about him, and really learned nothing from watching this. In fact, after about an hour, I think I slipped into unconsciousness a few times, wondering if I had been reborn in one of the 16 hell realms.

A classic case of the Emporers new clothes!