THE OPEN BOOK continued THE OPEN BOOK con't. next column THE OPEN BOOK con't. next column THE OPEN BOOK continued Shannon DeRespino lives in Sanford with her husband and their two black cats, Cam and Raven. She holds a B.A. in English from Wake Forest University and an M.A. in English & Creative Writing from Southern New Hampshire University. She has been contributing book reviews to the Pinehurst Gazette, Inc. since 2012. Chronicles, Vol. 1 by Bob Dylan (2004) Adult / Fiction, Review by Shannon Derespino The autobiography can be a tricky business. As readers, we must come to every autobiography with the knowledge that every individual can only write and know about the world from their own perspective. This may mean that memories are skewed, opinions are varied, and the individual bias we all have will always come out to play. An autobiography or a memoir is never the exact truth. It is the truth as perceived by one individual and, often, they may deliberately omit, color or change the events they describe. Chronicles, Volume One is an even stranger beast of an autobiography. When it was originally published in 2004, it was met with fevered anticipation. Bob Dylan is one of the great poets and songwriters of the twentieth c e n t u r y . Part of what makes him so fascinating is a general air of cryptic mystery a r o u n d e v e r y t h i n g he has done. He does not give direct or entirely forthright interviews. He doesn’t lie, but he certainly doesn’t wax poetic about what he meant by this lyric or that album. In general, he has exercised a laissez faire attitude towards his legacy. He wants us to work out what his music means to us, not obsess over his own place in the creation of the work. To Dylan fans, the idea of an autobiography meant finally getting inside his head in ways that to that point seemed impossible. True to form as a truly unique person, Bob Dylan’s autobiography defied expectations and left more than a few critics and fans puzzled. It was beautifully written, of course, with fascinating sentence structure and some absolutely incredible descriptive passages. The man can write. We all knew that. In 2016, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature—the first songwriter ever given such a prize. He has also been awarded a Pulitzer Prize. It wasn’t the way that Dylan wrote that was a surprise—it was what he chose to write about. Dylan wrote five long chapters. Three of them focused on the same year—1961—after he had arrived in New York City from Minnesota but before he recorded his first album. The other two chapters each focused in at length on one of his lesserknown albums (1970’s New Morning and 1989’s Oh Mercy). It’s a special, unique book. It may not have offered what some wanted (namely, an exhaustive look at Dylan’s experiences during the creation of his masterworks of the mid 1960s and mid 1970s or his in-depth thoughts about the writing of his most well-known compositions) but it offered something else. Chronicles is an emotional, personal book in which Bob Dylan explores some very specific moments in his life. It isn’t about trying to cast or capture himself as a great poet of his generation or a voice of an entire group of people. In fact, he seems to recoil from any such classifications. In his eyes, he loves music, and he loves his family, and he writes about that which captures him at any one time. Dylan comes across as highly-intelligent, curious, talented and constantly working towards something new. He doesn’t reveal deeply personal facts about himself, but he is present in the book. In some ways, he feels almost like a character in a novel rather than a real person. The fourth chapter, which focuses on his journey to New Orleans and the recording of Oh Mercy, is my favorite—a vivid short story populated by colorful characters and a man at the center trying to capture the sounds he heard in his head on tape. Thus far, no second volume of Chronicles has emerged. I wait for such a day with anticipation. This book isn’t going to solve the riddle of Bob Dylan, but it does further cement his genius, and it captures a series or worlds he has walked through—rural Minnesota post World War II, Greenwich Village in the early ‘60s, the collapsing counterculture in the late ‘70s, the sweaty streets of New Orleans in the 1980s—and makes it clear that these are just a handful of the worlds of Bob Dylan. It is impressionistic and magnetic—as unique and one-of-a-kind as the man who wrote it. David Copperfield by Charles Dickens (1849-1850) Adult / Fiction, Review by Shannon Derespino Charles Dickens seems to intimidate many modern readers. His novels are usually quite lengthy and full of seemingly antiquated Victorian language. For many, his name conjures up images of high school English classes and essays. I may be an English nerd, but I wholeheartedly disagree with the notion that Dickens is only for school or for intellectuals. During his time, Dickens was the writer of the people. He was like a rock star of his day. His novels were published in weekly or monthly installments, and everyone right down to the lowest classes and the poor anticipated each new installment with feverish excitement. Dickens led a difficult early life (forced to work in a blacking factory when he was still just a child after his father was taken to debtors prison) and he began writing novels that had a remarkable capacity for capturing the world as it really was. He did not weave elaborate fairy tales. He wrote about the Victorian England he saw around him, including the plight of the poor, the humor and love found in family, the despicable business practices, etc. It was this sense of realism mixed with his incredible knack for creating unique, memorable and colorful characters that endeared him to Victorian readers. He published 15 novels in his lifetime, between them showcasing almost 2,000 original characters. All 15 novels are worth reading if one has the time, but if a Dickens neophyte were looking for a great place to start, I might recommend David Copperfield. This was Dickens’ eighth novel, in many ways the pivot point between his early, characterbased novels (such as Oliver Twist and Nicholas Nickelby) and his later, more complex novels (like A Tale of Two Cities, Bleak House and Great Expectations). In Dickens’ own words, it was his favorite novel. He wrote in the preface of the 1867 edition, “Like many fond parents, I have in my heart of hearts a favorite child. And his name is David Copperfield.” The novel is a bit like a fictional autobiography for Dickens. It brings in many of the elements of his young life, including his time working in a blacking factory. It is a lengthy, brilliantly-conceived novel that follows David through all the formative experiences of his life. David relates the story in the first person, often addressing the reader directly, with the overall effect feeling very intimate—as if one were sitting down for a fireside chat with David. The novel is constantly changing and expanding as David grows and moves from one experience to another, coming into contact with a variety of extremely vivid and well-composed characters. Many of these characters, such as the foolish Mr. Micawber and the sinister Uriah Heep, are among the greatest and most beloved characters in Dickens’ vast oeuvre. For a new reader, I recommend listening to an audiobook version of David Copperfield, which will increase the sensation of having the story recounted to you and will bring Dickens’ humor, warmth and flair for drama to life. There is an excellent version read by English actor Richard Armitage available on Audible. Have a copy of the book close at hand to read along. Dickens need not be intimidating, but his writing is complex and may take some getting used to for a brand new reader. However, he was a truly brilliant writer (one of the true geniuses, in my opinion) and every book lover should read at least one Charles Dickens novel in their lifetime. David Copperfield contains so many of the elements that made him great—including that fierce devotion to humanity that was so much a hallmark of Dickens that it seems a logical and wonderful place to enter his world. �� No. 127 The Pinehurst Gazette, Inc. p.31
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