u/DYLANBOOKS

Dylan wrote Tarantula in the mid-1960s. His revolutionary songwriting, culminating in Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde, had challenged an audience reared on “Moon in June” pop. Tarantula can be seen as a literary companion piece.

It’s not light reading: you have to work hard. Most readers, mystified, couldn’t stand the pace.

Tarantula’s mix of poetry, prose and letters can best be seen as a rough notebook, chronicling the response of a young, gifted thinker to life’s complexities. The writing is uneven, occasionally striking, occasionally witty.

Critical opinion has been predominantly negative. But the Nobel Prize might be encouraging closer scrutiny. Tarantula could be due a critical reappraisal.

Having failed to finish it several times, I’m about to try again, this time in short sessions. I expect to discover both stimulating and incomprehensible ideas.

Have you read Tarantula? What do you think of it?

(Bob Dylan, Tarantula, Scribner, 2004, pbk, 137pp.)

As a condition of receiving the Nobel Prize in Literature, Dylan was required to deliver a lecture. It was a chance for him to speak in depth about his enormous body of great work and maybe try explain where it comes from.

Bob Dylan: the Nobel Lecture (Simon & Schuster, 2017, hbk, 23pp) does that, to some extent. Alongside his acceptance speech at the awards ceremony*, the lecture has some delicious insights. But I’d hoped for more.

The bulk of the lecture has Dylan summarising the three books he credits as influences - Moby-Dick, All Quiet On The Western Front and The Odyssey.

I found that slightly disappointing.

To buy or not to buy? If you’re a collector, certainly - it’s a beautiful little artefact. Otherwise, you might prefer to access the complete lecture via the Nobel video on YouTube, with its substantial bonus of Dylan’s trademark narration.

* Bizarrely, it was delivered by the US Ambassador to Sweden. She handles her tough assignment with aplomb. Video on YouTube.