Dylan's Visions of Sin (Hardcover)

~ Christopher Ricks (Author) "It would have been only too human for Bob Dylan at nineteen to envy Woody Guthrie..." (more)
Key Phrases: handsom young man, downhill dance, rich wealthy parents, The Oxford English Dictionary, Bob Dylan, Hattie Carroll (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Ricks, a professor of humanities at Boston University, allows his own musings about Bob Dylan to go "blowin' in the wind" in this love letter to the enigmatic bard. Focusing on the centrality of the seven deadly sins (pride, anger, lust, envy, sloth, greed, covetousness), the four virtues (justice, temperance, fortitude, prudence) and the three graces (faith, hope, love) in Dylan's writings, Ricks confirms Dylan's poetic genius and elevates the poet of the north country to canonical status alongside Tennyson, Shakespeare and Milton. Through a series of closely engaged readings of selected songs, Ricks demonstrates how each reflects a concern with sin, virtue or grace. Thus, "Lay, Lady, Lay" becomes an anthem of lust, "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall" a paean to fortitude and "If Not for You" a tribute to love. In every reading of the songs, he compares Dylan's poetry to the work of other poets, often finding either explicit correspondence or structural echoes of earlier works. For example, Ricks contends that the structure of "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall" mimics the structure of the early Scottish ballad "Lord Randal." Sometimes Ricks strives to be too hip and precious—as when he characterizes "Lay, Lady, Lay" as "erotolayladylaylia," and when he concludes that there are similarities between other poems and Dylan's by providing a list of one word correspondences, as he does with "Lay, Lady, Lay" and Donne's "To His Mistress Going to Bed." Nevertheless, Ricks's affectionate critical tour-de-force reminds readers why Dylan continues to encourage our "hearts always to be joyful" and our "songs always to be sung" as we remain "forever young."
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Product Description

Bob Dylan's ways with words are a wonder, matched as they are with his music and verified by those voices of his. In response to the whole range of Dylan early and late (his songs of social conscience, of earthly love, of divine love, and of contemplation), this critical appreciation listens to Dylan's attentive genius, alive in the very words and their rewards.

"Fools they made a mock of sin." Dylan's is an art in which sins are laid bare (and resisted), virtues are valued (and manifested), and the graces brought home. The seven deadly sins, the four cardinal virtues (harder to remember?), and the three heavenly graces: these make up everybody's world -- but Dylan's in particular. Or rather, his worlds, since human dealings of every kind are his for the artistic seizing. Pride is anatomized in "Like a Rolling Stone," Envy in "Positively 4th Street," Anger in "Only a Pawn in Their Game" ... But, hearteningly, Justice reclaims "Hattie Carroll," Fortitude "Blowin' in the Wind," Faith "Precious Angel," Hope "Forever Young," and Charity "Watered-Down Love."

In The New Yorker, Alex Ross wrote that "Ricks's writing on Dylan is the best there is. Unlike most rock critics -- 'forty-year-olds talking to ten-year-olds,' Dylan has called them -- he writes for adults." In the Times (London), Bryan Appleyard maintained that "Ricks, one of the most distinguished literary critics of our time, is almost the only writer to have applied serious literary intelligence to Dylan ... "

Dylan's countless listeners (and even the artist himself, who knows?) may agree with W.H. Auden that Ricks "is exactly the kind of critic every poet dreams of finding."

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 528 pages
• Publisher: Ecco (June 15, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060599235
• ISBN-13: 978-0060599232
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.4 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #680,255 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A fascinating labor of love, June 23, 2004

By	Steve (Massachusetts) - See all my reviews

Bob Dylan changed music (and the art of songwriting) forever in the 1960s. His continuing popularity is a testament both to the timelessness of his art, as well as to his uncanny ability to remake himself and his music, year after year. Dubbed the "poet laureate of rock-n-roll," Dylan's work has received more serious academic attention than any other folk/folk-rock musician out there, and for very good reason. Now comes Christopher Ricks, a well-known poetry scholar, to compare Dylan to some of the greatest poets ever: Wordsworth, Donne, Tennyson. The result is fascinating. I find it hard to believe that anyone could read this book and walk away from it without a renewed admiration for Bob Dylan and his music.

The book's structure has Ricks analyzing Dylan's songs according to the seven deadly sins, the four virtues and the three graces. This somewhat arbitrary classification feels sometimes strained, as Ricks struggles to pigeon-hole songs into one category or another. But far more fascinating than this academic chore is Ricks' exploration of the deep poetic and Biblical roots of some of Dylan's most popular tunes. With obvious love for his subject (and subject matter), Ricks shows, time and again, how Dylan makes use of the Great Poets in fashioning his unique and often haunted lyrics. Revealed is a musician who is not only a poet in his own right, but a well-read and thoughtful writer, who somehow accomplished the impossible: fashioning intelligent, thought-provoking music for a world obsessed with vapid vocals and meaningless "pop" standards.

Two minor flaws with the book. First: Ricks neglects a number of Bob's best songs--songs with fantastic lyrics and rhyme, songs that would seem to fit into his sin/virtue/grace framework perfectly (i.e., "Visions of Johanna," "Where Are You Tonight?", "Foot of Pride," "Black Diamond Bay," "Jokerman"). Of course, with over 500 songs to choose from, I suppose it's inevitable that some will be neglected. Still...

Second: Ricks is a fan of wordplay. Every page of the book is pregnant with puns, to the point where it becomes annoying. Too often, one is distracted from Dylan's brilliance by Ricks' literary showboating. Clearly a follower of the Vladimir Nabokov School of Alliterative Prose, Ricks struggles mightily for the appearance of cleverness, but his textual twists and turns frequently fall flat.

All in all, however, a wonderful (and serious) analysis of our greatest poet/songwriter, by a well-respected scholar. May Ricks' book be a launching pad for further serious studies of Dylan's work.

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Imaginative and Imaginary, June 20, 2004

By A Customer

Christopher Ricks is very well known for taking Dylan seriously as a poet and this is the long awaited product of many years of reflection. The basic idea of dealing with Dylan's corpus in terms of sins, virtues and graces is imaginative and promises a well structured and coherent work. Ricks' approach is clever and almost obsessive in searching for hidden meanings. It is the sort of obsession that Dylan himself finds futile and at which he frequently gets angry in interviews. There is great emphasis upon word-play and word association, and a great deal of reference to what a particular line in a song reminds the writer of in a poet like Shelley or Wordsworth. His approach, while very like that of Gray's, is much more sophisticated, but nevertheless slightly irritating at times because it says more about the cleverness of the author than it does about the subject of the book. The interpretations are idiosyncratic and largely imaginery, but nevertheless executed with grace and charm. I found Dylan and Cohen: Poets of Rock and Roll very clear in its criticism of this type of approach, which I think the author of it calls the concordance approach to literary criticism. Boucher explains why you just don't ask of some songs what they mean, such as Losing my Religion by REM or Whiter Shade of Pale by Procul Harem, you just 'delight' in the images. Nevertheless Ricks' book is a must for Dylan fans and well worth reading.

29 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Take what you have gathered from coincidence ..., July 20, 2004

By	R. Mumma (nj) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

You'll be a little jealous, of course, wishing you had the literary storehouse of information and insight that Christopher Ricks has at his disposal from which to gather literary parallels, borrowings, and coincidences. I have never been more impressed by ANY book of criticism written about a modern writer or musician. To be honest, I have not yet finished "Dylan's Visions of Sin," but I couldn't wait to comment here after reading the detailed comparison of "Not Dark Yet" and Ode to a Nightingale (yes, KEATS' Ode to a Nightingale) on pages 359-374. Sound ridiculous? It won't after you've spent the first 350 pages getting to this tour de force reading of a deceptively simple song from Time Out of Mind. But not only is the close reading of these lyrics/poems (the distinction won't matter after awhile in the author's pleasant company) impressive, but this is also a very funny and very warm book. There's nothing cold or academic about it. And there's no psychobiography, or any biography at all. This is Bob Dylan stripped to his most essential gift, his words. It's an absolute joy to read and I recommend it unreservedly, even to those of you (or especially to those of you) who may have been put off by the singer's voice, or his associations with Christianity, Victoria's Secret, and the Traveling Wilburys. I'm finding myself pulling out all my old LPs, even the scratchy bootlegs in their plain white sleeves, and listening to them with brand new ears.