October 12, 2007

Dylan's Back Pages as Curriculum

By EMILY ONDINE WITTMAN and PAUL R. WRIGHT

In Chronicles, Volume One, his 2004 memoir, Bob Dylan recollects his first days in Greenwich Village, in 1961. While crashing at the home of new friends Ray Gooch and Chloe Kiel, Dylan finds himself one day in "another room, a windowless one with a painted door — a dark cavern with a floor-to-ceiling library." Switching on the lamps in the library, he senses "an overpowering presence of literature," noting that "you couldn't help but lose your passion for dumbness." That

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