Greil Marcus takes a fulsome measure of Bob Dylan through a seven-song “biography”

Book review: Folk Music, A Bob Dylan Biography in Seven Songs, by Greil Marcus, paperback, 2023, $18, hardcover, 2022, $27.50 Yale University Press.

Look ahoy, mariners!
For perhaps 200 years, The Humanities have provided the pathway to wisdom, enlightenment and progress. I take the oceanic view here on Greil Marcus because he’s long proven himself arguably our best writer when it comes to popular music, partly because of the breadth of this knowledge which expands the impressiveness of his depth of insight and interpretation.
Of course, interpretation is always debatable, yet Marcus invariably gives you plenty to chew on, and an imaginative and transporting ride in the process. That’s why his latest book Folk Music: A Bob Dylan Biography in Seven Songs is so valuable and not to be missed. It was published recently in paperback, even though the prolific writer just published a short hardcover memoir.

And regarding at least related recent publications, Dylanophiles and pop music lovers should be onto the maestro’s own publishing masterwork to date The Philosophy of Modern Song, still only in hardcover as of this writing. Because that is Dylan writing prose (with admitted brilliance and range) about other people’s music it runs too far afield from this review’s focus, which is Dylan’s own songwriting.
Marcus has long understood that Dylan is our cultural lodestar if you can place that mantle on any given person. The singer-songwriter’s Nobel Peace Prize in Literature is an imprimatur because no other pop music figure, (read: mere songwriter) has ever won that award.

Bob Dylan the songwriter, pausing at the typewriter in the mid-1960s. The Criterion Collection

Yet anyone who has observed Dylan’s career would probably not vociferously dispute such accolades, especially if their own observation has been accompanied by those of Greil Marcus. Not that our man Friday has ever left Bob to his own Robinson Caruso-like devices.
Invisible Republic: Bob Dylan’s Basement Tapes helped Marcus put his deep stamp on Dylan’s pathfinding,
Since then he’s also given us Like a Rolling Stone: Bob Dylan at the Crossroads (2005), and the collection Bob Dylan by Greil Marcus: Writings, 1968-2010 (2010).
This all came after his shot across the bow, the rainbow-like Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock ’n’ Roll Music in 1975. No less a rock savant than Bruce Springsteen said, “(Mystery Train) gets as close to the heart and soul of America and American music as the best of rock ‘n’ roll.”
In that book though he didn’t dedicate a chapter to Dylan per se, (The Band, “his” band crucially, did receive one) Bob was close to the most-referenced artist in the book’s index.
And to truly understand the range of Marcus’s perceptions, I highly recommend the anthology that he co-edited, the voluminous A New Literary History of America.
His own contributions to that book reach back at least to Moby-Dick which earns him a lookout spot on the mainmast of my list of American cultural authorities.
By contrast the comparative conciseness and range of Folk Music (239 pages of text) reveals how he’s understands a pop music readership while still challenging it.

Now, he at first undersells “Blowin’ in the Wind” as “kitsch,” then proceeds to write a long love letter, acknowledging the song’s many suitors.

However, “in Dylan’s performance, a quick measured strumming from his guitar suspends the song in the circle of its own melody in the moment it begins. Across four minutes the feeling is unearthly, a hum seems to have been in the air of history: the sound of bodies going back to dust, the hum of thousands of insects bringing people who once lived into the earth, a humming snatched out of that air and forced to hold still.”

A bit grand perhaps, but Marcus’s own poetry strives to capture the song’s, with space and specificity. And notice how he acknowledges Dylan’s instrumental prowess, which is rarely done.
He goes on: “It is one of the most powerful, early manifestations of the quality that the defines Dylan’s music in its most uncanny moments throughout his life’s work, the quality of empathy. ‘I can see myself and others’: Here he sees himself in others and more than that disappears into them…
The fictional character he has created in the performance is still living the story out. History exists only in the future, when the story can be told out loud.”

The poet Joshua Clover summed up: “a figure on the order of Picasso or Stein – sui generis, seeming to lift the entire field onto his shoulders with heroic insouciance.”
“Heroic insouciance” sounds like Dylan through and through.

How many roads must a man walk down/

before he is called a man?

…And how many times must the cannonballs fly/

before they are forever banned?

The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind…”

The line “before he is called a man” is taken to heart by many African-Americans. as Mavis Staples claims, she who young Bob Dylan had once fallen in love with.
In this fulsome chapter, as in others. Marcus characteristically sees the song pointing to a pathway only he perhaps can see to other songs, but he lets us see it too. In certain instances even Dylan himself might be astonished by the ideas, but without necessarily discounting them.
Indeed, in The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll” Dylan effortlessly raises a long forgotten Black hotel worker to mythic status.
A man named William Zantzinger murders her in cold blood for no apparent reason. A clear hate crime as he brands her a n—–. “Having reduced the charge to manslaughter, the judge remanded Zantzinger, an aristocratic tobacco farmer, just to the county date jail, delaying this time until after the fall, so that he can oversee the harvest of his crop.”

“I wrote “Hattie Carroll in a small notebook, in a restaurant on seventh Avenue,” Dylan said in 1985. “I felt I had a lot In common with the situation and was able to manifest my feelings.”

And you who philosophize disgrace/ and criticize all fears/

take the rag away from your face/now ain’t the time for your tears”

“We listened in complete silence, as if we were holding our breath, as if we didn’t know how the tragedy would conclude –
in the courtroom of honor, the judge pounded his gavel
to show that all is equal and the courts are on the level…
and he spoke through his cloak, was deep in distinguished
and he handed out strongly, for penalty and repentance
William Zantzinger with a six-month sentence –
“When you listen, it’s as if the singer can barely expel the last word. It breaks and stumbles in his mouth, as if he will never not be shocked”

Bury the rag deep in your face/now is the time for your tears.” The song’s last chorus ended, but for power and dominion as those qualities gathered in the music, in the air, and public square they didn’t touch the tone of voice the last four words of the last verse.”

Perhaps debatable, but here Marcus acknowledges another underappreciated quality: Dylan’s typically roughhewn singing, almost always a marriage of voice and song.
These two chapters — on ”Blowin’” and “Hattie” — are marvels of extended interpretation, almost worth the price of the book.
He his far more concise in his discussion of “The Times They are a Changin’ ” Such a fearless interpreter may have felt that all the 1964 song’s history had said its peace as much as he could, even if that would fully stop him, though he says “The Times they are Changin’” Felt obvious, in the 1960s. Fair enough.
But now he takes the “Changin”” story to where one might hope he would: to January 6 2021.
“By then ‘The Times’ didn’t seem obvious, and history exposed how vulnerable it really was. The people flooding to the Capital, smearing feces on the marble, hoisting Confederate flags and John Calhoun and Charles Sumner looked down from the walls, smashing into the Senate chamber, beating police to the ground and kicking them where they lay, weren’t chanting “come senators, congressmen, please heed the call.
“But they could have been. Instead they sang ‘Old Dan Tucker’ shouting get out of the way you fucking n—– at Black capital policeman – Trump is our rightful president. Nobody voted for Biden — ”

***

The placing of the author’s own name in the 2010 collection astride Dylan himself, suggests Marcus’s ego billowing in the wind.
So, not every word or thought here is golden. Full disclosure: At times I resorted to a bit of skimming, especially in his elaborations on “Ain’t Talkin.’” a relatively obscure song from Modern Times, one of the longest chapters in a book that devotes only ten pages to “The Times They Are a Changin’” and ten more to “Desolation Row.” Perhaps he wanted to devote more attention to more recent Dylan, and throw a curveball in the process.

Blood on the Tracks album cover

I think “Shelter from the Storm” or “Lily, Rosemary & The Jack Of Hearts” or “Tangled Up in Blue,” from the mid-career summit Blood on the Tracks might’ve been better choices. Though he finally leaves us swimming in 12 pages of presidential blood in “Murder Most Foul.” from 2020, even if that is worthy the attention. Speaking of homicide, we also get 50 pages on “Jim Jones”! And yet, talk about curveballs! Instead of a song about the notorious cult suicide murderer, this “Jim Jones” is about a musty old folk hero/mariner from days of yore, for what reasons as a choice I know not.

Yet I suspect Marcus would welcome suggestions like mine, to temper his drama-queen impulses, although he could easily claim Dylan his “co-conspirator.”

In the final chapter, “Murder Most Foul,” Marcus takes extended measure of the recent Dylan title song that meditates on John F. Kennedy’s assassination. The event may be mere historical words to some, especially those many born after it transpired. But Marcus helps us see how Dylan escorts its resonances down through history, even as its subject remains crucified on the grassy knoll in Dallas in 1964.

History is the most elusive of mistresses and yet we continue to pursue her siren song or just turn away and misunderstand it, often to our downfall, for her ghost fingers so often point to illumination.
And truth told, at first reading of the chapter, I felt Marcus was overcome or daunted by the historical moment. In a second reading I finally realized he had aligned with the thoughts of an eloquent review of the pioneering bluegrass group The Carter Family’s ‘Mid the Green Fields of Virginia collection, as a kind of oblique yet apt summation of “Murder.”
It was written by John Pankake and Paul Nelson, coeditors of the 1960s folk music publication Little Sandy Review.
The editors write: “Certainly the Carter family intuitively understood and magnificently expressed in their songs and messages what has taken the sociologists and historians decades of thoughts to discover: that we are a nation of outcasts from Western civilization, doomed to forever devour then plunder the land we cannot cherish, to dream of fathers and kings and to love guiltily in the night. The hopeful falsehoods of our ’official’ art pale before the nightmare of our folk art, and though it speaks its truths in absurd sentimentality to balm with self-pitying tears the pain of a direct confrontation.

“Like the Carter family longing for the green fields of home, we may share these songs of lost innocence, but neither the sharing nor the innocence is the essential experience we see. It is, rather, the longing itself.”
Pankake further reflects “the more sentimental of us have difficulty facing the knowledge that when these singers are gone, they shall have taken a part of America with them, and their kind will never be seen on the face the earth again.”

It seems that sentiment of finality still abides John F. Kennedy’s passing. May we live to honor another morning soon, of one brief, shining moment, that burns beyond the last blowin’ wind.

___________________________

Two quintessential American salesmen and mirror opposites, Tim Arndt and Jimmy McGill/Saul Goodman

And the Good Samaritan, he’s dressing, he’s getting ready for the showHe’s going to the carnival tonight on Desolation Row.” — Bob Dylan, “Desolation Row”

Tim Arndt (1959-2024). All photos of Tim courtesy of Tim and Amy Arndt.

As I’m going in a sleepless gonzo-mode lately, I might not do justice to Cousin Tim Arndt or to spouse Amy Arndt’s power-packed obit of the extraordinary man who died of prostate cancer recently, at 64. It’s a revelation, the depth and myriad benevolence of Tim’s life. So, I hope this doesn’t seem too irreverent, as this is not an obit per se, and the ensuing analogy is meant to serve by contrast.

But as a culture vulture, I was struck by something in the sadness of Tim’s passing. In my house, we’re currently on a Better Call Saul-watching binge. Here’s the mirror reflection that caught my eye. It strikes me Tim’s life is the moral mirror-opposite of the title character. Tim started his professional career selling flip-style cellphones — close to the depicted the era when Jimmy “Saul Goodman” McGill starts re-inventing himself — selling “private” covert flip-style cell phones. And the TV series’ New Mexico setting ain’t far from Texas, so the cultural milieu isn’t too alien.

Jimmy McGill hustling private flip-style cell phones. The Georgia Straight

The big difference is how disgraced and disbarred lawyer Jimmy/Saul takes to selling cell-phones, for nefarious purposes. He has a born-salesman’s gift-for-gab, like Tim, but oh my, what Saul does with his gifts. Throughout the series he’s a salesman first and best, even when working as a lawyer.

What unfolds is a contemporary variation on the tragic American story of moral dissembling, through desperation, gravitating to the lure of free-market greed. He begins (with a lovely and upstanding blonde woman partner, like Tim), and he could’ve done so much good, and he knows it. We see this all grow like a cancer in him because Bob Odenkirk is a superb actor who reveals many shades of his character’s two-facedness. As Saul, he ends up exploiting his customers (initially retirees), and the system, as much as he can, eventually falling into the deadly cesspool of a Mexican drug cartel. He can’t help himself, his brilliant lawyer brother Chuck explains, dating from childhood, and consciously if compulsively continues to avoid the better angels of his nature.

Promotional image. Amazon.com

Activist Tim Arndt, by contrast, used the medium of Ma Bell for the sake of Mother Earth, as a springboard to profoundly protect and replenish the planet as a “climate change warrior,” and to help anyone who needed help. It seems that, like Saul, Tim couldn’t help himself, but to “do the right thing.” I shouldn’t make him out to be a saint but he seemed to be one of an empowering sort who “saw the potential in everyone and everything,” as his brother Steve commented. Saul sees the potential weakness in everyone.

Quoting Amy: “At Austin Energy, Tim was instrumental in the creation of the Energy Conservation Audit and Disclosure (ECAD) Ordinance. He took his passion for combatting climate change to 360 Energy Savers, where he leveraged rebates to help lower utility bills for residents of Austin.
Tim purchased 1st Choice Energy in 2021. There, he continued to fight climate change and helped make Austin’s low to moderate-income families more comfortable by providing energy efficiency upgrades as part of Austin Energy’s Weatherization Assistance program.”

Widow Amy also notes that Tim would stop to help anyone with car trouble. Jimmy McGill’s beat-up 1998 Suzuki Esteem – rusted-out yellow with one red car door, would’ve needed Tim’s help. In fact, Jimmy is in an accident in the series pilot when two skateboarders try to scam him by purposely running into Jimmy’s car. Jimmy’s nearly broke at the time (working at a Cinnabon shop) and the punks-on-little-wheels demand $500 compensation for the “accident.” Jimmy points to his car as “a steaming pile of crap” to show how hard-up he is and says, “The only way this car is worth $500 is if there’s a $300 hooker in it!”

If Tim Arndt had been cast in the show at that point, Jimmy might’ve seen the erring of his ways, though probably continuing down his slippery slope. That ethical task is up to Jimmy’s girlfriend, the sharp-lawyer Kim Wexler (Rhea Seehorn), who loves her pro bono work, in an almost morally preening way. She loves Jimmy, too, as his sounding board yet is strangely vulnerable to his “aw shucks” charms and deceptive bloviations. It’s a variation on a Macbethian love story, with the man as the infecting partner.

As Amy’s obit recounts in admiring detail, Tim Arndt was “The Ultimate Good Samaritan.” Jimmy’s version of “Goodman” Samaritan is to teach the young skateboarders how to scam better.

Girlfriend Kim Wexler (Reah Seehorn) listens to another explanation/vow from Jimmy McGill/Saul Goodman (Bob Odenkirk). Although high-minded, she has a weakness for his powers of persuasion and evasion. global.ca/news

Over time it became known that Tim had helped everyone in the neighborhood. If Tim could have been satirized at all, it might’ve been as a too-good-to-be-true do-gooder and tree-hugger, who might rankle some, but only as if we don’t need more of those in America. His tendency to be a found-objects “hoarder” might seem comical too, but all his gatherings were stashed in his garage (nicknamed “Vietnam” because of its devastated-looking chaos) which, with his special brand of genius, became a myriadic fix-it and repurpose shop for anyone who needed the once-again right stuff.

Among the more remarkable things Tim did was “returning BB King’s famous guitar Lucille to its rightful owner when it ended up in his possession,” as Amy recounts. (Please read Amy’s obit on Tim following this article — originally posted on her Facebook page — on more of what made him an extraordinary man.)

Tim Arndt, proud family man with (L-R) daughter Emily, spouse Amy, Tim, daughter-in-law Taylor, son Matthew.

Tim Arndt and Jimmy McGill embodied two versions of a quintessential American. Tim might have come as close as anyone with limited resources to being the ideal American, living to pursue justice, equality, and a measure of happiness for his own (the proud father of three) and anyone, and to help save the only planet we have to survive on. Though I didn’t know him well (he was a life-long Texan, I a Wisconsinite), Tim now feels like the brother I never had. In our shared Lynch genes, we even resemble each other. But he was probably a better man than me, than most.

Jimmy the Saul-man, with his own peculiar resourcefulness, was the every-man-for-himself American, the transactional con-man first brilliantly characterized in Melville’s The Confidence Man: His Masquerade from 1857), and agonizingly relevant today. Jimmy/Saul was a winning glad-hander, even capable of a flawed love, ever despoiled by the neediness of his greediness.

As for the way Tim loved, as Amy sweetly notes: “Tim was born in Dallas, Texas on Valentine’s Day in 1959. His mother Eileen almost named him Val, but thankfully, she chose Timothy James instead. Still, being born on Valentine’s Day meant Tim Arndt was born to exemplify love.”

May the Tim Arndts of the world inspire us, and may we be ever vigilant of the Saul Goodmans.

Tim and Amy.

_________

*Saul (Bob Odenkirk) may still be better known as the sleazy lawyer on Breaking Bad. Better Call Saul was a sort of prequel, telling the story of how Jimmy McGill came to be Saul Goodman. Odenkirk (only three years younger than dear Tim) has received six nominations for Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Actor in a Drama Series, marking his comic-tragic brilliance at embodying the conflicted yet chillingly mutating character.

_______________________

Tim Arndt’s obituary – the hardest thing I’ve ever written. What a guy!
By AMY ARNDT
_____
Timothy James Arndt, 64, died on January 22, 2024, after a 6-year battle with prostate cancer. Tim was the ultimate Good Samaritan, a climate change warrior, friend to many, and owner of the best laugh on the planet.
Tim was born in Dallas, Texas on Valentine’s Day in 1959. His mother Eileen almost named him Val, but thankfully, she chose Timothy James instead. Still,   being born on Valentine’s Day meant Tim Arndt was born to exemplify love.
Tim is survived by his wife Amy, the love of his life and pain in his ass, his son Matthew Arndt, daughter-in-law Taylor, daughter Stephanie Martinez-Arndt, and daughter Emily Rose Arndt. He is also survived by his brother Steve Arndt and wife Joy, brother TJ Arndt, and brother Mike Arndt. Other relatives include mother-in-law Judy Wilkins, father-in-law Glenn Underwood and wife Pam, sister-in-law Emily Montez and husband Rocky. Tim was predeceased by his mother, Dr. Eileen Lynch, and father Terry Arndt (unless you consult 23andMe, but that’s another story).
Tim attended W.T. White High School in Dallas, Texas, and graduated from Walden  Preparatory School in 1976. When Tim’s grades didn’t quite cut the mustard, he used his charm and gift of gab to gain admission to the McCombs Business School at the University of Texas.
Tim’s career was always focused on helping people. His sales career began at Cellular One in San Antonio, TX, where he sold the original “brick” cell phones and the original flip phone which sold for over $2,500. He later worked at the Travis County Medical Society’s Medical Exchange, where he sold pagers and communications services to physicians. He was responsible for developing the training of thousands of Central Texans at the Customized Training division of Austin Community College. At Austin Energy, Tim was instrumental in the creation of the Energy Conservation Audit and Disclosure (ECAD) Ordinance. He took his passion for combatting climate change to 360 Energy Savers, where he leveraged rebates to help lower utility bills for residents of Austin.
Tim purchased 1st Choice Energy in 2021. There, he continued to fight climate change and helped make Austin’s low to moderate-income families more comfortable by providing energy efficiency upgrades as part of Austin Energy’s Weatherization Assistance program.
Tim’s brother Steve wisely noted that Tim “saw potential in everyone and everything.” An altruistic hoarder, Tim’s garage was well known as “Vietnam,” because his collection of random objects looked more like a war zone than a garage full of dreams. We joked that if you needed something, Tim would ask, “What color?” because he likely had more than one of whatever it was you needed. He stopped to help anyone having car trouble. He refused to pass a lemonade stand without stopping to support a small business. One time Amy realized Tim had helped someone from every single home on their street. He considered people experiencing homelessness to be his neighbors, and he never judged a person for their circumstances. He simply helped them.
Tim’s laugh is almost as well-known as his good deeds. When the kids were little, if they got separated from Tim in a store, they never worried because they could find Tim by the sound of his bellowing laugh. Amy described Tim’s laugh as “a cross between a machine gun and Bert from Sesame Street.”
Tim could do so many things that we kept a list of “Things Tim Arndt Can Do.” The list included: taking almost anything apart and putting it back together, buying and fixing cars, building a treehouse out of recycled materials, and returning BB King’s guitar Lucille to its rightful owner when it ended up in his possession. He could dance the Jitterbug, cross-country ski, juggle, walk on stilts, safely hold bees in his mouth, and catch snakes and tarantulas. He could cook like nobody’s business, sew his firstborn son’s baby bedding (including bumpers), and create custom Halloween costumes, often at the very last minute. He could swim the length of a pool in one breath. He could even catch a fly with chopsticks.
Though Tim spent his life serving others, his family and friends were his greatest joy. He was often overheard telling someone on the phone, “I’m just lucky that I’m still madly in love with my wife.” He loved his Saturday morning ritual of talking to his brother Steve (and by way of speakerphone, Steve’s wife Joy). He was a caring role model for his little brother Mike. His Sunday morning breakfasts with his best friend Jon were his favorite start to the week. Nothing made him prouder than being a parent to Matthew, Stephanie, and Emily Rose. His legacy of love and good deeds lives on in his children, who all possess his best qualities.
Tim was a Yellow Dog Democrat to his core, working on numerous campaigns, block walking, phone banking, and helping register voters. One of his favorite things to tell people was, “The only part of my permanent record that I’m proud of is that I’ve never missed an election.” And it’s true; Tim voted religiously.
Speaking of religion, Tim was a cradle Catholic and lived the examples of a Christian life his entire life. However, when Tim’s cancer spread to his bones, he developed a skepticism about God and the afterlife. During this time Tim developed a friendship with Father Matt Boulter, the priest at St. George’s Episcopal Church in Austin. Tim concluded one of their last conversations by saying, “If you’re right, I’ll see you on the other side!” Then he laughed his giant laugh.
Tim’s family and friends believe that Tim’s work on earth gave him a VIP pass to the other side. While the world is a quieter place without Tim and his famous laugh, his memory will live on through his children, his countless good deeds, and the good deeds we can all do to honor him.
The family sends their unending appreciation and love to Tim’s medical team and caretakers. To the team at Texas Oncology: Dr Carlos Ruben de Celis, Colleen Adkins, PA-C, Dr. Louis Lux, Francesa Ciponi, LCSW, C-DBT, Vanessa Hohn, Senior Patient Services, and the many nurses and techs that Tim made laugh, thank you for your excellent care. Thank you to the team at Hospice Austin, especially Stephanie Beam, RN, and Cat Ross, CNA, whom Tim truly loved. Thank you to the incredible team at Christopher House, who cared for Tim so lovingly in his final days.
A celebration of life will be held on Saturday, March 23 at 2:30 at the Hancock Recreation Center in Austin. To honor Tim’s memory, please consider a donation to Hospice Austin, Christopher House, the Forensic Anthropology Center at Texas State (FACTS), or a climate change organization of your choice. If donations are cost-prohibitive, please consider doing a kind deed in Tim’s honor.
May be an image of 1 person
All reactions:

You, Sheila A. Lynch and 315 others