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Greil Marcus: Bob Dylan At The CrossRoads


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LIKE A ROLLING STONE: Bob Dylan at the Crossroads. By Greil Marcus. (Public- Affairs, $25.) The books written about Bob Dylan could fill up a bookcase — and any suspicions that the publication of Dylan's extraordinary memoir, ''Chronicles,'' would slow the tide seem premature. ''I've written a lot of books and after reading Dylan's book, I realized I would never write a book that good,'' Marcus said recently. Yet that hasn't stopped him from trying. Marcus's latest — published eight years after ''Invisible Republic,'' his exploration of Dylan's ''Basement Tapes'' album with the Band — is a ''biography'' of the singer's signature hit, a single that Rolling Stone magazine recently selected as the greatest song of all time. (Some readers might begin to wonder if Marcus's next book will be an exegesis of the chorus to ''Jokerman.'') Marcus, the author of such landmarks as ''Mystery Train,'' perhaps the finest book ever written about pop music, can still deliver blazing insight. His description of the pure sonics of ''Like a Rolling Stone'' — a sound so complete and perfectly realized that it ''never plays the same way twice'' — forces you to approach a 40-year-old song with new ears. The song ''promises a new country,'' Marcus writes; ''now all you have to do is find it.'' But too many tropes in Marcus's cultural criticism are starting to feel overfamiliar, and too much of his own Dylanology is starting to fold in on itself. This book's subtitle is ''Bob Dylan at the Crossroads''; the opening line of ''Invisible Republic'' was ''Once a singer stood at a world crossroads.''

ALAN LIGHt

http://nytimes.com/2005/07/03/books/review...ICIT.html?8hpib

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