Customer Reviews

Bob Dylan: Prophet, Mystic, Poet

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Although a Dylan fan and admirer of his philosophic and poetic lyrics for the last 40 years, there was always a nagging feeling that I didn't quite get something about them. I understood them for their political and social importance, but, for me, that just didn't add up to everything that was really there. Now I know why. With this book, Rogovoy has supplied the key to the missing piece. In reading "Dylan: Prophet, Mystic, Poet" and re-evaluating the lyrics in the context of Dylan's Jewish influences, they become richer and fuller. What was resonant before, now is revealed to have a multi-layered depth that makes them all the more meaningful.

This book isn't just for Dylan fans (and it's a must-read for them), it's for anybody who's ever wondered how the precepts of religion can impact life in a practical and profound way.

Buy the book.

i have read well over 100 books about bob dylan and this book frames his emergence in a manner that none before have accomplished
the links between old testament quotes and passages and lines and thoughts in dylan's output are a revelation
highly recommended for both the casual and the devoted follower

i have read many dylan books. this one ranks way up there. the author demonstrates that dylan has relied heavily on the bible for a great deal of his inspiration and he explores the true prophetic nature of dylan's work. it is an exceptional analysis with many brilliant and inspired parts. i absolutely love this book and will probably read it again. it is highly recommended for anyone deeply interested in bob's work. at one point he goes a little too far in suggesting that dylan regreted his deep involvement with christ's teachings but the rest of the book is spectacular. i can't recommend this book enough.

Seth Rogovoy's book is a valuable new voice in the already crowded field of writing on Dylan and spirituality. He traces an arc through Dylan's career based on the tradition of Jewish prophecy, and he works hard to do justice to several scruples: one scruple acknowledges that Dylan's own beliefs are not accessible, and that this *prophetic* interpretation is not, in fact, a decoding of Dylan's own faith. Another scruple acknowledges that the facts of Dylan's life and career are too many branches from too many roots to be reduced to a single, unifying source. Another scruple is Rogovoy's personal commitment to his argument, which makes the book an affecting narrative of one man's decades-long relation to art that speaks powerfully and constantly to him.
The practical benefit to serious Dylan listeners is Rogovoy's inventory of passages from Jewish scripture throughout Dylan's lyrics. We're familiar with many Biblical phrases in the songs, and Rogovoy opens up that familiarity into discoveries that were new and interesting to me. Most are utterly defensible, some allusions in the book require a generous imagination to hear, but on the whole this inventory is compelling and reflects hard and rational work.
As an overview of Dylan's career, serious and informed fans may find some familiar summary here, but there is enough that's provocative to merit reading the entire thing. And I'm grateful that Rogovoy found the time to rush in a brief and lively coda chapter on Together Through Life.
If you're new to Dylan, and have a strong interest in the spirituality and religious traditions in his work, this book provides a smart and accessible overview to Dylan's career in that context.
I had the great pleasure of hosting Seth Rogovoy in a Dylan course I'm leading in NY, and he is a generous and passionate, quick-witted and knowledgeable speaker. (And in the interests of transparency, I did buy my own copy of his book before meeting him.)
The book and the person, I can recommend both.
Nina Goss
Editor, Montague Street
[...]

This is a beautiful and fascinating book. Of course it's well known that before Bob Dylan became Bob Dylan he was Robert Zimmerman, a skinny Jewish kid from Minnesota who was fascinated by folk music lore. But for all the books written about Dylan's life and art, few authors have delved into the role his religous background played in forming the man he became. This is particularly odd because Dylan has gone through so many highly public phases of religious enlightenment. Rogovoy explores the Judaic thread that's run through Dylan's life and reveals a much more complicated artist than most people realize. All Dylan fans should have this on their shelves.

I am really enjoying this book!

I thought I should weigh in because I am neither a Dylan fanatic, nor am I particularly religious. Rogovoy got it just right - I am reading this for kicks and I seem to be "accidentally" learning something along the way. I think I am going to get some additional copies to give as gifts this holiday season!

Not only do I enjoy Bob Dylan's music and songwriting but the development of Jewish and Christian traditions is something that I enjoy reading about and studying as a spiritual person. Needless to say, I was quite pleased when I discovered that someone had embarked upon the task of documenting references, either direct or indirect, of Dylan's Jewish heritage and how that heritage has affected his songwriting and life. Unfortunately, Dylan's Jewishness has often been neglected in writings about him. It's generally passed over as a piece of trivia, not as a contributive identity. He is recognized as the singer, the songwriter, the poet, even the prophet - but what about Dylan the Jew? Of course, the book doesn't treat Dylan's religious beliefs directly, but it surely surmises.

Overall, the book was a quick read yet highly informed and thus highly informative. It easily ranks among the best books on Dylan currently available. The author, a longtime follower and researcher of Dylan, tries hard not to repeat too much information available elsewhere while also acknowledging that there are some very basic facts which newcomers - whether to the musician or the literature about him - need to know. Such is inevitable. Where this book excels is in connecting the imagery found in the biblical prophets (Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, et. al.) and Dylan's lyrics. Even the staunchest biblicist might not readily be able to see such otherwise apparent parallels, but Rogovoy has done his research. There are moments when the connection cannot be explained any other way than to suggest that Dylan was as intimately familiar with the texts of Jewish tradition as he was with the works or Rimbaud, Brecht, and William Blake.

That being said, however, at times the connections between the biblical prophets and Dylan's lyrics seem forced, sometimes based on little more than a few matching words even when context seems to demand exclusive interpretations. Outside of John Wesley Harding and New Morning and other explicit moments of Dylan's affluence for biblical imagery, there are definitely moments when the thesis of the book is stretched to its outermost limits applying biblical or talmudic references when in fact there is very little or no connection at all. The author displays a tendency to connect words or three-word phrases to themes which have very little business being connected. For this reason, the album-by-album, song-by-song exegesis which serves as the layout of practically the entire book soon grows long in the tooth and sometimes proves to be redundant. By the mid-'80s, Dylan's songs seems to have settled upon a few ideological bases which inform his work from that point forward with only slight modifications whether that be in terms of degree or perception. Thus, when Rogovoy's explication of "Shot of Love" and "Infidels" highlights that Dylan's songs increasingly focus on a "world gone wrong," the final pages of the book could easily be skipped without missing much new revelation on the subject.

Even though the author and Harold Lepidus (of the Bob Dylan Examiner, who assisted Rogovoy with the book) both state that Dylan's religious beliefs are not directly dealt with in the book, it's difficult not to read the chapters titled "Burnt Offerings" and the following "Psalms" somewhat apologetically. Despite what the author states in interviews, there is definitely a certain emphasis placed upon attempting to extract Dylan from his "born-again Christian" identification. For example, in the chapter titled "Psalms," when discussing the song "When The Night Comes Falling From The Sky," specifically the lines "I don't want to be a fool starving for affection/I don't want to drown in someone else's wine," Rogovoy interprets these lines as suggesting that Dylan is recanting his earlier acceptance of wine as Jesus' blood (as is believed by many evangelical and Catholic Christians) and that the born-again Christian period was merely a phase promulgated by a love relationship. In short, Dylan was and is not a true Christian believer. Taking this concept further, Rogovoy interprets the final verse of the song "Man of Peace" as referring to Dylan's return to his distinctive Jewish identity by suggesting that Dylan was beginning to view Jesus as Satan. A proper analysis of these lines within the context of the song, though, do not warrant even a hint of this type of surreptitious, nuanced interpretation. Despite what the author says about his not getting directly involved in Dylan's religious affairs, it nonetheless seems apparent that Rogovoy isn't going to allow Dylan to stray far from the Jewish fold. In this vein, Rogovoy attempts to suggest that the concept of Jesus as Messiah and as Dylan's personal savior is not quite as implicit in the songs of this born-again time period as some people might otherwise claim, thus attempting to resurrect the albums Slow Train Coming and Saved for pundits of whatever creed; however, he fails to read between the lines, not recognizing allusions to Jesus even when the name "Jesus" isn't referenced. The very cover art of the album Slow Train Coming symbolically alludes to faith in Jesus as Messiah. Where Rogovoy excels in his understanding of traditional Judaism, he alternatively displays a certain ignorance when it comes to Christianity and the Christian tradition, including everything from classical exegesis to the high arts - the very things which help to inform the imagery of Slow Train Coming, Saved, and even Shot of Love (which the author excludes from this period despite thereference to the Gospel of Matthew in the liner notes). For this reason, he fails to properly acknowledge the Jewish roots of Christianity, thus accounting for why the images found in the lyrics of Dylan's born-again "phase" may seem like an extension of his Jewish heritage.

Aside from these criticisms, the book ought to be applauded as pioneering a whole new brand of Dylan research. I look forward to further books and articles which expand upon the thesis of this book while exercising some constraint for the sake of precision.

Dylan fans will marvel at Rogovoy's intuitive understanding of the man and his music. I've read tons about Dylan over the years, but this is a look from a different angle. And it's a great one. Dylan himself might be surprised to learn how being Jewish shaped his identity and lyrics! A must buy for anyone on your Channukah list!Hats & Eyeglasses: A Memoir

I plan on giving this book a shout out at all my gigs. Finally, a lively and accessible 'Rosetta stone' for the lyrics of Bob Dylan. Anyone who cares about the art of songwriting and the fascinating and surprising influences of sacred text on American music will treasure this. I do. Laura Wetzler, singer songwriter

There have been times when I did not have much appreciation for what I could buy, including some things by Bob Dylan. The album New Morning never appealed to me, but I knew the song If Not For You from George Harrison's All Things Must Pass. I never spent much time with Psalm 147, thanking God for taking the darkness away. It took a few pages of the book Bob Dylan, Prophet, Mustic, Poet (2009) by Seth Rogovoy for me to link New Morning with Bob Dylan moving his family to a block near 6th Avenue and, of all things: "Dylan was reputedly studying Judaism with a Hasidic rabbi in Brooklyn. Dylan also alledgedly began flirting with support for the Jewish Defense League, an activist group . . . led by the controversial Rabbi Meir Kahane (who, coincidentally, presided at the Brooklyn bar mitzvah of a young Arlo Guthrie in 1960)." I liked what this book had to say about Dylan's song, Down In The Flood, about a crash in which: sugar for sugar, salt for salt, if you go down in the flood it's gonna be your fault. I have plenty of feelings for this book to play with like religion tries to bind people into social systems, but the modern ways in which people share such vulnerability rarely get so much attention from writers and critics who prophecy with their pens.