Dylan's The Philosophy of Modern Song

Part 2: About the Book

The Philosophy of Modern Song by Bob Dylan (Simon and Schuster). Release date, Nov. 1, 2022

When Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016, abut half who of those who cared said, "well-deserved. Overdue." The other half said, "Bob Dylan? Isn't he a songwriter? What has that got to do with literature? What about Philip Roth?"

Well, that's comparing apostles and orangatangs. Who else did not win Nobel Prizes for Literature, and certainly deserved it? James Joyce, Kafka, Borges, Nabokov, Tolstoy, Ibsen, Proust, Rilke . . . and Roth. That none of them wrote "Sad Eyed Lady of the Low Lands" does not disqualify them. I’m just saying. As Ann Crittenden pointed out in American Heritage in 2019, winners have included "the prolific Holldor Laxness (1955), who wrote novels, plays, short stories, newspaper articles, and travelogues – all in Icelandic."

But The Philosophy of Modern Song (Simon & Schuster) is Nobel Laureate Dylan's first book since the charming Chronicles Volume One, which…