"Older Then, Younger Now": Bob Dylan Through Late Style
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"Older Then, Younger Now": Bob Dylan through Late Style Arthur James O’Dea BRelEd, M.Phil. Thesis submitted for the award of PhD Dublin City University School of English Supervisor Dr Michael Hinds School of English January 2019 Declaration I hereby certify that this material, which I now submit for assessment on the programme of study leading to the award of Doctor of Philosophy is entirely my own work, that I have exercised reasonable care to ensure that the work is original, and does not to the best of my knowledge breach any law of copyright, and has not been taken from the work of others save and to the extent that such work has been cited and acknowledged within the text of my work. Signed: _______________________________________ ID No.: _______________ Date: ______________ i Acknowledgements A little over ten years after first encountering Dr. Michael Hinds as an undergraduate student, this thesis is the culmination of a self-belief he set in motion. With his patience, precision, inventiveness and a seemingly endless interest in the vagaries of Bob Dylan, every meeting with Michael only served to intensify my interest in what we were undertaking. Although it’ll be undoubtedly pleasant to meet under less pressing circumstances, I cannot stress how enjoyable it has been working with him over the course of this thesis. Bringing an unrivalled eye to proceedings, Dr. Gearóid O’Flaherty is also deserving of the sincerest thanks. Acutely assuring that everything was as it should be, his willingness to help was much appreciated. Furthermore, I would like to thank DCU’s School of English for their support throughout, as well as offering me the opportunity to teach whilst concurrently working on my studies. Sincere thanks also to Seán Fox. A soundboard for so many of the ideas explored in this thesis (let alone everything that came prior to that), his insight on these matters was regularly insightful. A friend throughout, he has continually listened when it may have been easier to talk. Offering insight and compassion when it was needed, a special word of thanks is also due to my aunt, Sr Pauline O’Connor. I only wish your return to Ireland had extended further still. A word of thanks must be extended to Conor O’Kane and Pat McCann. It might be a few years ago now, but the incredible generosity of both men enabled me to successfully balance the commitments of working and studying without either element unduly suffering. To Erica, I simply wish to thank you for your love and support when it was needed most. Although we both know your work will do a greater deal of good, you’ve indulged me, nevertheless. Moving on to “this next verse though,” I hope to repay the love and support in kind. Finally, I would like to extend the heartiest thanks to my family. Continually going above and beyond in their attempts to help by whatever means necessary, they supported me when even I occasionally lost sight of what was at hand. Displaying a sincere interest in a world of my own making, thank you for keeping alive a sense of normality amid the occasional madness. ii Table of Contents Declaration …………………………………………………………………………………... i Acknowledgements …………………………………………………………………………. ii Abstract …………………………………………………………………………..……….... iv Introduction ………………………………………………………….……………………… 1 Chapter One: Lateness & Greatness …………………..……………..……………………. 8 I: Beginnings …………………………………………………….…………………. 12 II: ‘Reading through critical lapses’…………………………….………...………. 33 Chapter Two: Protest & Protesting Protest ………………………….……………….….. 56 Chapter Three: Reinterpret & Reinvent ……………………………….………………… 81 I: ‘Dylan’s mid-life crisis’ ……………………………………….………………… 86 II: World Gone Wrong ……………………………………………..……………… 95 III: ‘Celestial grunge’ ……………………………………………….…………… 102 Chapter Four: Uncovering “Bob Dylan” ………………………………………………... 108 Chapter Five: ‘Politics, Philosophy & Organic Farming’ ……………………………. ...137 I: Nashville Skyline ……………………………………………………………….. 147 II: Self Portrait ……………………………………………………………………. 156 III: New Morning …………………………………………………………………. 168 Chapter Six: The Dylan-Image ………………………………………………………….. 187 I: ‘At free play’ …..……………………………………………………………….. 199 II: Dylan’s Self-Portrait …………………………………………………………. 206 Chapter Seven: “Isn’t There Enough Irreverence in the World?” …………………….. 215 I: Christmas in the Heart ………………………………………………………….. 222 II: ‘A Simpler Time’ ……………………………………………………………… 237 Conclusion: ……………………………………………………………………………….. 254 Works Cited: ……………………………………………………………………………... 255 iii Abstract This thesis will argue that Bob Dylan’s art is one of renewal and recycling, one in which the very concept of originality and “an artistic career” is queried. The peculiar nature of Dylan’s relationship with chronology was set as early as 1964 with the assertion of “My Back Pages” that “I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now.” Dylan’s project has always been one of destabilising and productively representing the self (rather than himself), anticipating how his work is received and demolishing that reception. I analyse the patterns of revisionary disruption within Dylan’s work, at first using Edward Said’s On Late Style. Necessarily, attention then shifts toward Said’s precursor, Theodor Adorno. The study therefore contributes significantly to our understanding of Dylan, and in particular by focusing on areas of his work that have sometimes seen as aberrations (his Christmas album, his cover version of Sinatra, his much-derided Self Portrait), but it also adds to the discourse on late style by demonstrating how lateness is not a matter of age, but of decision and commitment on the part of an artist. It also questions Adorno’s insistence that such matters are limited to the domain of classical forms of expression, and develops Perry Meisel’s related conception of canonicity contra Adorno. Dylan’s late style disagrees with Said and Adorno on lateness, particularly in how they relate it to idea of biological aging. While the older Dylan may be seen to be in possession of a late style, the Dylan who arrived on the scene in the 1960s did so too. He has always disrupted how others might see him, and has always run the risk of destroying his own settled reputation. Dylan has always played Prospero, therefore, he is (and was) always late. iv Introduction On October 9, 2018, an exhibition of works by Bob Dylan opened at London’s Halcyon Gallery entitled Mondo Scripto. It showcased framed sheets of headed paper upon which Dylan had written out in black ink the lyrics to sixty of his own songs, then adjoining each sheet (within its frame) was a pencil-drawing by Dylan which corresponded with to a particular image from the lyric. Paul Green of the Halcyon proclaimed Mondo Scripto as an unprecedented demonstration of Bob Dylan’s mixed-media practices: “Dylan has for the first time fused together his artistic disciplines” (qtd. in “Bob Dylan, Mondo Scripto”).1 To give this a further aspect of the unprecedented and auratic, a modest collection of Dylan’s earlier paintings was also displayed, while a sound-system kept his musical back-catalogue playing throughout. Undoubtedly, this offered the exhibition an unexpected vitality. Also juxtaposed throughout the gallery with the colourful paintings of Dylan’s exhibit from 2016, The Beaten Path, these newer monochrome drawings appeared unfinished, as if they had been framed before the artist had an opportunity to complete them. Furthermore, given Dylan’s decision to focus on one particular character or idea from a chosen song, the viewer’s imagination was also inevitably drawn towards thinking of the surplus of images from the song which remain undrawn.2 Compared to the song-texts, the sketches offer only a semblance of a line or word; a fraction of the work. Re-inscribing the lyrics in ink, Dylan appears to offer the authentication of an autographed copy, authorizing his songs as literature. Yet portions of the rewritten lyrics do 1 It should be added that the mixed-media concept behind Mondo Scripto was not unprecedented. Self Portrait (1970) and Planet Waves (1974) both possessed cover art that Dylan himself had drawn for the purposes of each album. Unlike the cover art on the earlier albums, however, these subsequent drawings were the product of Dylan’s revisiting a number of earlier works. 2 Although one exception exists in the panels for “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door,” where Dylan presents the song’s protagonist using everything from his closed fists, a baseball bat, a pneumatic drill and a crucifix to knock on the door in question. This calls attention to Dylan’s reluctance to experiment similarly when it came to other lyrics. 1 not necessarily correspond with the audio recordings being played simultaneously through the Gallery’s speakers. Despite the fact that Dylan had written, recorded and consistently played these songs across the previous decades, an inescapable intrigue surrounds the errors in the text that appear throughout, the inconsistencies which might be read as faults in transcription or calculated disruptions. Such a quandary in many ways defines where the scholar of Dylan always ends up, second-guessing the man and the work, and above all pondering apparent inconsistencies. In her assessment of Mondo Scripto, Anne Margaret Daniel remarked that such inconsistencies feature across the broad spectrum of Dylan’s contemporary work: “One thing is for certain sure: Dylan is still revising today, in performance, and in the texts he’s just released publicly for his Mondo Scripto show. He’s using words and phrases that might be brand new, or that he might have written … decades ago” (29). Green’s claim that Mondo Scripto was “bringing a new perspective to the music and lyrics” is somewhat accurate; but as Daniel demonstrates, it is also something which Dylan has always done, disrupting the foundations upon which his work might be understood and querying assumptions about reception and transmission. This could be defined as his artistic signature (even as he queries the idea of artistic signature). Released within a month of the exhibition, the fourteenth edition in Dylan’s bootleg series More Blood, More Tracks offered a similar cause for reassessing what is understood of Dylan’s work.