A Small Bucket of Academic Writings on Bob Dylan

At some point a few years back I received an email asking, "Are you the Ed Newman who authored this paper on Thus-and-So." I replied that I was not, but decided to look into it further and was amazed at how comprehensive this website (Academia.edu) was.  

As it turns out, Academia.edu is a popular online platform primarily focused on the academic and research community. It serves as a centralized hub for sharing, discovering, and accessing scholarly content, often described as a "social network for researchers." Launched in 2008, it has grown into one of the largest repositories of user-uploaded academic papers, with over 296 million registered users and more than 55 million PDFs available for free download. 

After researching the site, I downloaded a couple academic papers about Bob Dylan. Since that time I have regularly received emails asking I were the Ed Newman who wrote this or that or some other document. More often I receive emails telling me about a Bob Dylan related paper that has been uploaded.

Here is one of these emails, with links to ten academic papers about various aspects of Bob Dylan. Have fun.

You read the paper Book Review: Christopher Rollason, ‘Read Books, Repeat Quotations’: The.... We found a related paper on Academia: BD BMCR 2018 2018.11.51 Review of Richard Thomas Why Bob Dylan Matters.pdf  thomas palaima 2018, Bryn Mawr Classical review 399 Views  View PDF ▸   Download PDF ⬇ ABSTRACT A review of Richard Thomas, Why Bob Dylan Matters, written specifically for classicists, broadly defined. In this book, you will get a sweeping overview of Dylan’s songs and writings, their cultural significance—what personal experiences and concerns, intellectual influences and historical issues called them into... read more... Your recent reading history: Bob Dylan Ain’t Talking: One Man’s Vast Comic Adventure in American Music, Dramaturgy, and Mysticism 2010 - Peter Murphy Through the Eyes of Tom Joad: Patters of American Idealism, Bob Dylan, and the Folk Protest Movement - Katherine Sartain Swashbucklers and Femme Fatales: Gender Coding in John Williams's Score to Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008) - Conor Power The Gospel According to Bob Dylan by Michael J. Gilmour (manuscript version) - Theodore Trost T. S. Eliot and Bob Dylan: Confronting “The Modern Condition” with Faith - Adam Basson Review of T. S. Eliot and the Christian Tradition - Stephen Barber Book Review: Christopher Rollason, ‘Read Books, Repeat Quotations’: The Literary Bob Dylan - Jesus Lopez-Pelaez Casellas War Hurts: Vietnam Movies and the Memory of a Lost War - Benjamin de Carvalho 'Dylan in Cinema', [thesis], Trinity College (Dublin, Ireland). Department of Music, 2014 - Jonathan Hodgers “Narrative in ‘Love and Theft’, Modern Times, and Tempest,” in Tearing the World Apart: Bob Dylan and the Twenty-First Century, Nina Goss and Eric Hoffman (eds) (Jackson, MS: UP of Mississippi, 2017), 103–16. - Jonathan Hodgers

30 Miscellaneous Dylan Clippings Discovered While Doing Research for Bob Dylan in Minnesota

I suspect that most journalists love doing research. I know that I do. That's half the fun of being a writer. Especially when you discover surprises like a giant shark's tooth on a Maryland beach or an unusually spectacular agate on the North Shore.

While trying to get some facts straight for the book Bob Dylan In Minnesota (the fourth book in K.G. Miles' Troubadour Series) I enjoyed a leisurely afternoon scanning through clippings from our local newspapers and tabloids. It was especially funny to come across a few things I myself had written.

As every Dylanophile knows, there are more than a few contradictory facts that you can find in the various books about Bob. As the saying goes, it is what it is. 

Here's a batch of clippings, some of which you may or may not have seen before. A few are not local, as you will notice. I'll try to share more soon. There are a lot of them and every picture tells a story.

Hilarious "oops"... This is the Duluth Hillside home. Not Hibbing.

THIS is the Hibbing house... a few decades ago.
It is now part of the Bill Pagel collection.

LeRoy Hoikkala, drummer for the Golden Chords,
Bob's first garage band in Hibbing

Have a fun weekend. It's Grandma's Marathon in Duluth. 

And Father's Day on Sunday. Happy Father's Day to all you dads.

If you forgot to get your pa a Father's Day gift,
here's something he might enjoy if he's a Dylan fan.

Check it out HERE

Don't Believe Everything You Read About Dylan

Who's Harry Belefonte? It's Belafonte, with an a.

This week I was doing library research about Dylan in Duluth. Specifically, I was reading through all the Dylan-related articles that our Duluth Public Library has catalogued in its archives. 

There were a number of surprises. First, I was surprised at how many clippings were stories I myself had written or had one of my paintings in. The bigger surprise was how many mistakes there were in some of the clippings. That is, in several instances there were misspellings, and in one instance an incorrect caption.

I didn't initially set out to document errors, but I did make note of a few. The first was a very nice article about the host of the Dylan-themed KUMD radio program Highway 61 Revisited, John Bushey. Except, throughout the article the author spelled his name Jon Bushy. Note to writers: when it comes to names, always doublecheck your spelling.

Yes, names can be tricky. That is why writers (and editors as well) need to go the extra mile to confirm spelling. For example, when I Google "Harry Belafonte" I get Harry Belafonte. And guess what? If you Google "Harry Belefonte," Google will reply, "Showing you results for Harry Belafonte." In our internet age it is really not all that hard to get it right.  Ask and you shall receive. 

There's another kind of error that is less easy to recognize. One of the articles had a photo of the Central Hillside home young Bob Dylan nee Robert Zimmerman lived in for his first six years. Or that is what it purported to be. This is where the Duluth Dylan Fest celebrates Dylan's birthday each year on May 24. We all know it well, but evidently the editor on this story did not know it so well because the caption reads, "Bob Dylan's childhood home in Hibbing."

Well, it just goes to show ya that you can't believe everything you read. Here's what the house in Hibbing looks like, along with accurate captions for both.

Today, both houses are owned by Dylan collector/archivist Bill Pagel who is in the process of restoring the homes to how they were back when "Bobby" was growing up and living here. If you're in the neighborhood, don't be shy. Stop on by.

As for accuracy, Dylan himself has a reputation of having been a notorious obfuscator. And occasionally you will find details in books about Dylan that repeat errors from earlier Dylan biographers. You wouldn't really know it was false because the "fact" has appeared so many times in print that it seems true. (This happens in many other contexts, especially politics and sports.) 

As the saying goes, it is what it is. Que sera sera.

Related Links
John Bushey Legacy Leaves No One Untouched