A weekend special....
Whoever it was in 1969 who named the very first Bob Dylan bootleg album “Great White Wonder” may have had a mischievous streak. There are any number of ways you can interpret the title — most boringly, the cover was blank, like the Beatles’ “White Album” — but I like to see a sly allusion to “Moby-Dick.” In the seven years since the release of his first commercial record, Dylan had become the white whale of 20th-century popular song, a wild, unconquerable and often baffling force of musical nature who drove fans and critics Ahab-mad in their efforts to spear him, lash him to the hull and render him merely comprehensible. --- Bruce Handy, NYTimes ____________________________________________ I figured we can start fresh with Bob Dylan. Couldn't resist this photo of him striking a Woody Guthrie pose. Looks like only yesterday. Here is a link to the comments building up to this reading group.
For Bo again:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/07/books/review/Williams-t.html
I think he gets it.
That sounds like a book I won't be reading.The author seems a bit out there.I mean using the womans movement as a reason why white male yokels started seeing or fabricating Bigfoot sightings in the 60's and 70's because their manhood was threatened seems a wee bit loony to say the least.
ReplyDeleteOne of the things I loved about the Pyle book is that he really gets at the question of the nature of science, and how we know what we know. This is where the bigfoot story really intrigues me. I'm sort of thinking I should become a bigfoot expert in my spare time.
ReplyDeleteSo this new book interests me, even if he appears to take the current obsession with bigfoot out of its historical context, which is where Pyle was so good.
Speaking of historical context, there is another academic book about bigfoot also just published (two bigfoot studies in one year?):
http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/11135.php
New York: Sorry, I must have misplaced my modifiers. The committee met in DC, but the members come from all over the country. The person who quipped about Lincoln and Darwin is a neurosurgeon from Washington University. I like it when people from medical schools have a sense of history!
ReplyDeleteThe resulting meeting will take place this summer in DC, with the goal of defining a new direction for undergraduate biology, which is still sort of stuck in the 19th century. (This is one of my many eclectic interests when I'm not chasing down bigfoot, much to the chagrin of my biologist friends.)
Two bigfoot bboks in one year.A right and a left?
ReplyDeleteBy the way the Mcleod book from UC press"Anatomy of a Beast" sounds like an interesting read.
ReplyDeleteA left and a right? There could be something to that....!
ReplyDeleteSo I went to cancel my Sunday NYTimes after all these years and they offered me 6 months at 50% off.So I'll keep getting it after all.
ReplyDeleteI checked the cover price here and it's $8.00. I like to have the real paper when I can, but it's getting pricey alas. Wonder if I can get a 50% off deal here.....
ReplyDelete