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Chronicles Volume 1

Chronicles Volume 1
Chronicles Volume 1
By Bob Dylan
This edition: Mass Market Paperback, 304 pages
List Price: £7.99
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Description

This is the first spellbinding volume of the three-volume memoir of one of the greatest musical legends of all time. In CHRONICLES Volume I, Bob Dylan takes us back to the early 1960s when he arrived in New York to launch his phenomenal career. This is Dylan's story in his own words - a personal view of his motivations, frustrations and remarkable creativity.
Publication of CHRONICLES Volume I is a publishing and cultural event of the highest magnitude.
'An extremely good book indeed, actually a great one. If you are not weeping with gratitude by the end, then frankly, the age has passed you by . . . I cannot remember a book that has made me happier than this one'

Bryan Appleyard, SUNDAY TIMES

'Undoubtedly the best-received autobiography of the year'

THE SUNDAY TIMES

'Dylan's thoughtful, beautiful Chronicles has taken everyone by surprise. Who'd have thought that Dylan, whose life has been blighted and distorted by his fans, would write such a great book about loving - and devouring - art?'

Nick Hornby, THE GUARDIAN

'The greatest music book this year, of course, is the Bob Dylan Chronicles Volume One - a cultural event so notable I was genuinely bemused as to why it didn't make the 6 O'Clock news'

Caitlin Moran, THE TIMES

'In 1966, Dylan was the counter-culture's Jesus and crazed bums were clambering over his Woodstock roof posing a threat to his kids. When you put it like that (and in CHRONICLES, Dylan did) there's no wonder he was pissed off. Lucid and engaging, rendered in gorgeous prose, his first volume of reminiscences was full of such glimpses into its author's humanity, while Dylan's humbly expressed enthusiasms sent readers scurrying onto Amazon to order works by Thucydides and Roy Orbison. Volume 2 cannot come soon enough'

MOJO, BOOK OF THE YEAR

'I just can't put it down. I feel as though Dylan, my favourite artist, was talking to me personally. I loved the way he talked about how it felt when he first arrived in New York. I felt the same in London at the start of my career'

Leo Sayer, SUNDAY EXPRESS

'A startling event... [Chronicles] shows Dylan's extraordinary command of language, married in the book to an uncanny recall of events and a masterly narrative sensibility'

THE OBSERVER

'A book which measures up to -- and in many respects surpasses
-- the highest hopes anyone could have had of it . . . The narrator of CHRONICLES VOLUME ONE turns out to be a superbly candid and engaging character, with a sharp descriptive eye . . . and a writing style pitched somewhere between Kurt Vonnegut at his most dryly aphoristic and a grown up Holden Caulfied . . . If you've always wondered how this man transformed the supposedly antique certainties of folk music into the soundtrack to the most self-consciously forward looking of decades, this book has the answer . . . Dylan's willingness . . . to be a man out of time . . . combined with a rare insight into the moment he was in . . . The power of that combination echoes down through the decades as clearly in these pages as in any song you might care to mention'

Ben Thompson, INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY

'Dylan's writing never loses its richness, its sense of crystalline observation. He's unexpectedly frank about his own shortcomings - but not too frank. Throughout, a careful balance has been struck between elusiveness and revelation. Readers hoping to gain admittance to Dylan's inner sanctum may be surprised by how far in they are allowed to venture'

John Preston, SUNDAY TELEGRAPH

'There is something on every page, in every paragraph, that demands attention... In rock and roll terms, this book is like discovering the lost diaries of Shakespeare. It may be the most extraordinarily intimate autobiography by a 20th-century legend'

THE DAILY TELEGRAPH

'Brilliant, fascinating and gobbled up in one sitting, but I didn't find Bob Dylan's authobiography Chronicles: Volume One half as straightforward as everybody else seemed to. At last, the truth? Up to a point. His songs are crazy with candour and anger and burning aggression - "You're an idiot, babe!" - but the book? Dylan masterfully hides behind that well-known, late-middle-aged celebrity trait: "It's just a job, man." He was, so it would seem, merely a humble balladeer (rather like Bobby Darin, apparently) trying to make it in Tin-Pan Alley. It's folksy story-weaving, as finely wrought as any of the faux 1860s ballads of genius, but it's still the book of the year for me'

Griff Rhys Jones

'Bob Dylan's writing voice in Chronicles: Volume One is almost as magnificent as his singing voice'

Kazuo Ishiguro

'The Book No One Thought Would Ever See The Light Of Day.Chronicles by Bob Dylan. In which Dylan diverges without divulging (much) and riffs without revealing (all). But what did anyone expect? The first of three mooted volumes, Chrnoicles abandons conventional autobiography in favour of a more organic approach to personal history. A jigsaw puzzle with two boxes of pieces to come.'

TIME OUT

'I am rationing out the chapters of Bob Dylan's Chronicles. It is an extraordinary book on many levels . . . Sometimes a turn of phrase stops me on the page, and I find myself remembering the hair-raising excitement of first hearing his songs. Wonderful.'

Niall Williams, SUNDAY TIMES

'All of which makes CHRONICLES: VOLUME ONE a double delight: besides being a treasure trove for Dylan fans, it is also sparklingly well-written . . . the shock and the joy of CHRONICLES lie in its unexpected accessibility and the relish its author brings to deflating his mythical status . . . As you would expect from such a respected wordsmith, Dylan also offers up a multitude of striking images . . . There is a directness and candour to CHRONICLES that suggests the absence of a ghost at this feast . . . CHRONICLES is warmly readable, offering a series of vignettes rewarding even for those who haven't hung on the man's every utterance for the past five decades. Slowly and deftly, CHRONICLES peels away some of the enigma that still swirls around Bob Dylan, and leaves you hungrier than ever for Volume Two.'

Patrick Humphries, SUNDAY EXPRESS

On the lost highway
The Australian, October 21, 2011
...Clock in 1954, opening the door for rock 'n' roll. It will not be until the likes of Bob Dylan in the early 60s that a white crossover artist of Williams's songwriting calibre and revolutionary influence emerges again. He should be in an ...
Christopher Ward’s room with a leafy view
Globe and Mail, September 23, 2011
...uses a storyteller's voice to reveal the wonders of nature. In music reading, I was astounded by Bob Dylan's Chronicles: Volume 1. Who knew that after four decades of obfuscation, Dylan would lay it out so clearly! Books are a huge influence ...
On magazine's holiday gift guide
Yakima Herald Republic, December 16, 2010
...is a risky, possibly illusion-shattering endeavor. But this year's "Just Kids" by Patti Smith succeeds just as Bob Dylan's "Chronicles: Volume 1" did a few years back. In fact, Smith's National Book Award-winning recounting of her pre-fame ...
Bob Dylan sings the songs of America
All About Jazz, September 6, 2010
...Age of Reagan') is talking about spirits from the past and mysteries of the present. His new book, ' Bob Dylan in America,' (Doubleday) is about how the strains of American music and American history have come together in one man over the ...
BOOK/MAGAZINE: Bob Dylan Sings the Songs of America
All About Jazz, September 6, 2010
...Bob Dylan sings the songs of America Historian Sean Wilentz posits the archetypal singer-songwriter as a confluence of our nation's history. The author is beginning a residency at the Huntington ...
Bob Dylan sings the songs of America
KTLA, September 5, 2010
...Age of Reagan') is talking about spirits from the past and mysteries of the present. His new book, ' Bob Dylan in America,' (Doubleday) is about how the strains of American music and American history have come together in one man over the ...
Book reviews: Chronicles Volume 1, by Bob Dylan
Helium, June 21, 2009
...Some years ago, when asked whom he would like to have the chance to interview, Bob Dylan replied, 'I'd like to interview people who died leaving a great unsolved mess behind, who left people for nothing to do for ages but speculate'. Which ...
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