I’ve got nothing against academic writings on Bob Dylan. He is, without doubt, a signficant cultural icon who has produced a body of original and influential work, both as recording artist and songwriter, particularly in the period from ‘Bringing It All Back Home’ to ‘Street Legal’ (although even this era includes some best forgotten dross). However, as Tom Palaima’s review of The Cambridge Companion to Bob Dylan, Edited by Kevin J.H. Dettmar in THE exemplifies, it isn’t long before clever folk stop talking about what makes Dylan and his songs culturally significant, and resort instead to ludicrous hyperbole e.g. “No songster since Homer has spoken with so dominant and sustained a voice to the realities of a culture.” Tom Palaima’s review is pretentious wankery pure and simple, and perhaps illustrates why Dylan is sometimes contemptuous of academic interest in his music and lyrics. Let’s hope the essays in the Cambridge Companion are a little less grovelling.
Freewheeling Bullshit
Posted on June 19, 2009 by Julaybib
Bob Dylan Sued Over Dignity For Plagiarism
Camden NJ June 2, 2009 -Few artists can lay claim to the controversy that has surrounded the career of songwriter James Damiano. Twenty-two years ago James Damiano began an odyssey that led him into a legal maelstrom with Bob Dylan that, to this day, fascinates the greatest of intellectual minds.
As the curtain rises on the stage of deceit we learn that CBS used songs and
lyrics for international recording artist, Bob Dylan. Bob Dylan’s name is credited to the songs. One of those songs is nominated for a Grammy as best rock song of the year. Ironically the title of that song is Dignity.
Since auditioning for the legendary CBS Record producer John Hammond, Sr., who influenced the careers of music industry icons Billy Holiday, Bob Dylan, Pete Seger, Bruce Springsteen and Stevie Ray Vaughan, James has engaged in a multimillion dollar copyright infringement law suit with Bob Dylan.
It is judicially uncontested by Bob Dylan and or Bob Dylan’s law firms Manatt, Phelps & Phillips , Parcher Hayes & Snyder, Gibson Dunn & Crutcher, Heck Brown and Sherry and Sony House Counsel that Bob Dylan and people in Bob Dylan’s entourage have solicited James Damiano’s songs and music for over ten years and eleven months, as per the law suit.
District Judge Jerome B. Simandle states in his decision “This court will accept as true Plaintiff’s allegations that Sony represented to him that he would be credited and compensated for his work if Dylan used it. Judge Simandle also stated in his decision “Plaintiff has demonstrated a genuine issue of material fact as to whether defendants had access to his work.
http://www.jamesdamiano.com/
Richard Frankel
uslawjournal@gmail.com
Palaima is quite enamored with Dylan, it’s true. But why not consider the possibility that he’s actually right, rather than stroking your own sense of superiority to academics? Dylan really is an amazing songwriter, and it’s hard to think of any others who match up across the board. Of course, the world-historical claim is hard to assess simply because we don’t know anything about most of the poets and singers who have ever been around, but so long as Palaima is allowed to limit himself to the evidence we actually possess, I don’t think it’s a tremendously overblown claim. One thing I can assure you from my personal acquaintance with the man is that Palaima really means it and would be happy to argue with you about it, however easy it is for you to dismiss it as pretentious (academics are used to being denounced as pretentious by anti-intellectuals, so I doubt he’d miss a beat).
I’m not anti-intellectual – what makes this claim pretentious is that, quite typically, it seeks to eulogise Dylan rather than analyse him. The former is the job of intellectuals. The latter role should be left to priests.
My thanks to Bob, whoever he or she is, on July 2, 2009.
Let me explain here.
I had 800 words to review a book that has 17 different essays analyzing Dylan’s songs and his cultural influence.
My review selectively guides potential readers to the strong points of the Cambridge Companion.
It also gives my views on why Dylan has the stature that he has earned.
I specifically address, as does one of the essays, why Dylan has problems with not only academic takes on his work, but criticism, in the literal sense, of what he does, who he is and what people make him stand for.
Dylan’s genius has been acknowledged by a special Pulitzer Prize for “his profound impact on popular music and American culture, marked by lyrical compositions of extraordinary poetic power” and by a Kennedy Center award
(watch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79C8VhvBq1A).
He has been awarded the highest honor France can bestow on anybody: Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.
And he has received many other acknowledgments of the kind of genius and influence that has made many others beside me rank him as special even among elite cultural figures.
What I know is Greek history, Greek language and culture and Homer.
My claim is not idle and it is not simply made to speak well about someone who does not need my speaking well about him in ways others have done better (or in more overblown fashion if you do not accept my argument here).
Dylan has touched upon virtually all aspects of human life. This is what few other figures in the history of mankind have done. I know Homer does that in his Iliad and Odysssey. Shakespeare does it, too, but he is not a popular singer, like Homer, whose music goes out there among the people. How many people recite Shakespeare in the shower? And like Homer and Shakespeare, Dylan does more than ‘just entertain’. He sheds light where it needs to be shed.
And Dylan has this high level of cultural impact not just for American culture. He is listened to and his music has meaning, as I have witnessed and have also heard on bootlegs, in Spain, Greece, France, the UK, Germany, Japan, Serbia, Argentina, Australia, Italy and elsewhere around the world. The greatest historian of Dylan’s live performance is named Olaf in Norway!!!!! Michael Gray, author of the Bob Dylan Encycopedia, is a citizen of the UK. Andwho can forget japanese author Junichi Saga being grateful that the great Bob Dylan had read his book and used lines from it in his songs!!!!
Recently a friend of mine, A Dylan lover, has been diagnosed and operated on for a brain tumor. He is a Dylan fan as I am. He is a father to two teenage boys, as I am of one. For Father’s Day, his wife asked me to compile a Bob quiz. There was virtually no important human topic, from dogs (including hot dogs) to war, no important aspect of the human response to love, no important facet of making one’s way in society, and no important way of being a father, that Dylan has not somehow touched upon in songs.
I stand by my claim, that I have thought about and lectured on.
Again in a 800-word review every word is important. And one often has to assert what one would otherwise argue (in the literal sense of reveal clearly).
Please go to the Web site I list and scroll down to and get a pdf of my paper “Bob Dylan Our Homer.” There I present my ideas with more example and arguments.
http://www.utexas.edu/research/pasp/publications/dylan/dylana.html
I think your claims to be just making a valid academic point succinctly is frankly specious. It’s eulogy – erudite and articulate eulogy, granted, but eulogy, nonetheless. And you know it. Dylan is undoubtedly hugely significant as a cultural phenomenon, and this is where the problems begin. I perceive a fine line seperating your kind of clever uber-eulogy and e.g. women/men who change their name to Dylan and go around claiming to be his sister/brother. This troubling culture of Dylanmania should itself be a matter for critical evaluation, not the sail and rudder guiding how intellectuals think and write about his life and work.
Many thanks again for your interest in my review and its subject.
For a few thoughts on the topic of celebrity and how people and cultures use it, see my commentary in today’s Austin American-Statesman.
http://www.statesman.com/opinion/content/editorial/stories/2009/07/11/0711palaima_edit.html
As for what you say here now, my explanation stands as an explanation. What you want to read into my explanation and my original review is outside of my control.
What you call here a fine line, I would call a Grand Canyon of separation or the space between worlds that are worlds apart.
Tom Palaima