Did you know there are currently over 1000 books in the Bob Dylan cannon?
One of the better ones and one that Dylan actually approved of, No Direction Home: The Life and Music of Bob Dylan by Robert Shelton, was just re-released with a slew of other Dylan titles to coincide with Dylan’s 70th birthday. The new edition, edited by Elizabeth Thomson and Patrick Humphries, is 20,000 words longer than the original edition.
So what does Dylan have to say about the plethora of material written about him?
This is from a post on Dylan’s website the week before his 70th birthday:
“Everybody knows by now that there’s a gazillion books on me either out or coming out in the near future. So I’m encouraging anybody who’s ever met me, heard me or even seen me, to get in on the action and scribble their own book. You never know, somebody might have a great book in them.”
Now get to it.
And, in case you missed it, Democracy Now! had a fantastic 70th birthday tribute to Dylan featuring some rare interviews and songs from the Pacifica Radio Archives.
Review of the new edition of No Direction Home at Publisher’s Weekly.
Pile-Up of New Dylan Lit: Prize-worthy or Pulp? at Crawdaddy Magazine