Rambling out of the wild west
Leaving the towns I love the best
Thought I'd seen some ups and downs
'Till I come into New York town
People going down to the ground
Buildings going up to the sky.

Wintertime in New York town
The wind blowing snow around
Walk around with nowhere to go
Somebody could freeze right to the bone
I froze right to the bone
New York Times said it was the coldest winter in seventeen years
I didn't feel so cold then.

I swung on to my old guitar
Grabbed hold of a subway car
And after a rocking, reeling, rolling ride
I landed up on the downtown side:
Greenwich Village.

I walked down there and ended up
In one of them coffee-houses on the block
Got on the stage to sing and play
Man there said: "Come back some other day
You sound like a hillbilly
We want folksingers here.

from 'Talkin' New York' on 'Bob Dylan' (1962)

I'm reading Volume 1 of Bob Dylan's 'Chronicles', his much hyped autobiography. 150 pages into it and to be honest I'm baffled by the critical praise that's been heaped on it. Dylan may have been hailed - to his eternal dismay - as the voice of a generation but he is far from being one of its intellectual giants. There are a few interesting autobiographical nuggets in here, but his story is mostly presented in a blunt, strangely lacklustre and fragmented way.

Here's a recollection from his early years in New York, a time when he was apparently educating himself in every branch of the arts, politics, philosophy and history:

Once I put on Beethoven's 'Pathetique' sonata -- it was melodic, but then again, it sounded like a lot of burping and belching and other bodily functions. It was funny -- sounded almost like a cartoon. Reading the record jacket I learned that Beethoven had been a child prodigy and he'd been exploited by his father and that Beethoven distrusted all people for the rest of his life. Even so, it didn't stop him from writing symphonies.

This passage is clearly more about Bob's ego than Beethoven. The subtext is: Beethoven wrote pleasant tunes but he can easily be dismissed by someone who is about to turn the world of music on its head. Dylan, the acerbic, misunderstood visionary who made it to the top by dint of gritty determination and irrepressible genius, also had a tough childhood and distrusts everyone, but it hasn't stopped him writing his own symphonies either, has it? I've seen grown men moved to tears by Beethoven's 'Pathetique', but Bob obviously ain't one of them.

To me Dylan gives a sharper, wittier picture of his early experiences playing the New York folk clubs in the song quoted above than he does in 100 pages of laborious prose. Occasionally 'Chronicles' seems like the literary equivalent of his dire mid-70's movie 'Renaldo and Clara', minus the music. Maybe it will improve, but if you want to know what Dylan was really like in his swaggering, youthful prime I'd recommend watching DA Pennebaker's highly entertaining documentary 'Don't Look Back' instead.