44 of 51 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Sadly disappointing, April 6, 2009
This review is from: Revolution in the Air: The Songs of Bob Dylan, 1957-1973 (Cappella Books) (Hardcover)
Just received this today (from amazon.de) - and I'm sadly disappointed by the pretentious and rather sloppy research.
Nothing really new here - no really new insights, but mostly a repetition of material found elsewhere already and treated in a more reliable and considerably more scholarly way in books like Michael Gray's The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia or Oliver Trager's Keys to the Rain.
Add to this Heylin's rather condescending tone, everybody else's research (in his eyes) seems to be faulty and cannot be trusted - just savor this rather pompous statement:
"Needless to say, the Internet has also provided endless opportunities for the unpublishable, self-appointed "expert" to pontificate on the man and his art, but I have felt little inclination to fuel their self-importance, with a citation here." (p. 451)
As condescending (or outright arrogant) Heylin is in (several) statements like these throughout the book whenever other people's research/work is concerned, he obviously has no scruples whatsoever to exploit the websites of these "unpublishable" peons (in his eyes) rather extensively, presenting their findings in a way that suggests that these are his own without crediting his sources appropriately, thus rendering his book as academically rather useless, even bordering on plagiarism.
A particularly blatant example is to be found on p. 136. Heylin writes that "Judy Collins, in a 1996 email regarding the two songs, confirms that 'the Seven Curses are related to Anathea'" and extensively quotes from this email, creating the impression that he had been the recipient of it, whereas he "lifted" this email (without credit to his source and proper attribution) verbatim from [...] whose webmaster (and not Heylin) had received it from Judy Collins back in 1996.
It is this obvious lack of scholarly ethics (not crediting sources that one considers "below par" while at the same time using and exploiting them for one's own gain and "glory") which exposes Clinton Heylin as what he claims others to be: a basically "unpublishable" (his book is rather boring to boot), mostly self-appointed "expert".
Do yourselves a favor and do not fuel Heylin's self-importance by buying this hyped and pretentious product (except for a comparison to those by Michael Gray, Oliver Trager, or Derek Barker's Bob Dylan: The Songs He Didn't Write and Todd Harvey's The Formative Dylan -- all of those present an unbiased scholarly approach devoid of the obvious hybris found throughout Heylin's book, a clear distinction between these authors' own research with properly attributed and credited citations from sources and websites consulted and not merely "exploited" without proper credit as in Heylin's case).
To sum it up: Pretentious and hyped in advance but found to be scholarly totally unreliable (sources not credited properly in academic fashion). Sadly disappointing....
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17 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Could have used a fact checker (and an ego checker), April 27, 2009
This review is from: Revolution in the Air: The Songs of Bob Dylan, 1957-1973 (Cappella Books) (Hardcover)
Clinton Heylin is notorious for editorializing in works that are supposed to be scholarly, as well as for spending a lot of time bad-mouthing everyone ELSE who writes about Dylan. Here, he's in rare form, lodging one complaint after another about Dylan critics (who are, in many cases, actually better writers AND better historians than he is). While there is some new information here that will make the book useful for Dylan fans, there is so much inaccuracy among the known facts that the new information has to be considered questionable (in particular, when he mentions whether a song was performed on the Neverending Tour, when it was first performed, or how often it was performed, the information given is often demonstratably false, despite the fact that the information is VERY easy to obtain). As usual, though, it's not the inaccuracy that makes this book hard to read, it's Heylin's usual sniveling, self-satisfied tone. The act of writing a book about someone else is, by nature, something of an unselfish act, but Heylin manages to look like an egomaniac in the process.
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10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Academic and dull, September 30, 2009
This review is from: Revolution in the Air: The Songs of Bob Dylan, 1957-1973 (Cappella Books) (Hardcover)
Dylan certainly wrote some of the most fascinating music of our time. But Heylin's treatise is so soaked in detail about the first performances and other technicalities that there appears to be little passion for the music itself. Other reviewers take Heylin to task for being factually incorrect; I do not know enough to judge that. I take him to task for making what should be a fascinating subject very dull and academic. After reading the book, I wondered, did Heylin actually like any of these 300 songs? If he did, I sure could not tell from this book.
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