Song & Dance Man 3: The Art of Bob Dylan - Softcover

Gray, Michael

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0826463827 ISBN 13: 9780826463821

Publisher: Continuum Intl Pub Group, 2002

Synopsis

This classic work is the definitive study of Bob Dylan's 40-year body of songs and recordings. This latest edition offers copious fresh material, including major studies of Dylan's remarkable use of the blues, nursery rhyme, films and the Bible. Unique in its scope and its integration of literature and music, criticism and biography, this highly entertaining and authoritative book has earned exceptional reviews.

About this title

About the Author:

MICHAEL GRAY is a distinguished critic, writer &broadcaster. He graduated in History &English Literature at York University, England, in the 1960s, where he studied under the controversial, brilliant critic Professor F. R. Leavis, and where as a student journalist he interviewed, among others, the eminent British historian A. J. P. Taylor and the legendary American guitarist Jimi Hendrix. His pioneering study of Bob Dylan's work, Song &Dance Man, first published in the 1970s in Britain, America and Japan, was the first full-length critical study of this crucial 20th Century cultural figure. It is now recognised as a classic in its field. A selection of pieces on Dylan, All Across The Telegraph: A Bob Dylan Handbook, published in 1987, was co-edited by Gray and included work by several distinguished academics in the fields of English &American Literature and Music. In 1996, Michael Gray co-authored The Elvis Atlas: A Journey Through Elvis Presley's America, published in hardback in New York by Henry Holt. The massive Song &Dance Man III: The Art of Bob Dylan was published by Continuum in March 2000. A special reprint appeared in the US in April 2001, when Gray delivered talks at a number of US universities; a fourth reprint was published in New York and London in 2002 and a fifth in 2004. Michael Gray is recognised as a world authority on the work of Bob Dylan and is an expert on rock'n'roll history and the blues, with a special interest in pre-war blues. Please visit his blog at http://bobdylanencyclopedia.blogspot.com.

Review:

"Monumental, endlessly illuminating" - Rolling Stone (Rolling Stone)

"Impressive." —Christianity Today (Christianity Today)

"Notably, there is a fat, new edition of Michael Gray's huge and wonderful critical work, Song and Dance Man (a lifetime's labor). Cranky, eloquent, opinionated, exhaustive, Gray's book proves that scholarship can be fun to read....The secret engine driving Dylan's art is lost to us, deep inside a black box. Michael Gray's intellectual efforts in Song and Dance Man probably come as close as analysis can to unlocking possible sources, chasing arcane references, connecting the dots." —The News & Observer (The News & Observer)

"The definitive critical work."—Evening Standard (London), 2/24/03 (Evening Standard (London))

“Extraordinarily useful... I have always admired Gray’s reach, tone, and acuity but the research here is just amazing.” - Greil Marcus (Greil Marcus)

“One of the three best books of the year.” (Andrew Motion, British Poet Laureate, The Observer, London)

“Immense and immensely illuminating... It is wonderfully comic and serious and sharp. I am enjoying it hugely and learning from every page.” - Christopher Ricks (Christopher Ricks)

“In examining the influences that shaped Dylan into one of the most influential postwar artists, Gray draws on everyone from Elvis to Eliot, Robert Johnson to Rimbaud...This huge work is overwhelming... ‘It’s all been written in the book,’ sang Bob Dylan. Now it really has.” - The Times, London (The Times, London)

“Illuminating, wry and exhaustive.” - Newsday, US (Organ Australia)

“The definitive critical work.” - EVENING STANDARD, London, 2003 (Evening Standard)

About this edition

• Publisher: Continuum Intl Pub Group
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0826463827
• ISBN 13: 9780826463821
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 944