Chronicles.

So Bob got a Nobel prize for literature. Good for him. But he seems to be in two minds about it. More than two knowing Bob.

I came close to meeting him in London back in the Sixties but it wasn’t to be. I like his music. On the other hand he’s always come across as a bit devious. Like me. In interviews he seems to be hiding something all the time or wishing he was doing something else. Like he’s too intelligent to waste his time answering stupid questions. I can see how somebody in his position could get like that but all that dodging and weaving must take its toll. I was curious to see what he had to say in his book.

Samantha gave me a copy of  'Chronicles' before I left. So I start reading it on the plane and I can’t put it down. It’s much better than I thought it would be. I was expecting a lot of evasive stuff and double-talk but he plays it fairly straight. It’s bulging with characters, references and images. Thucydides, Milton, Judy Garland, Woody Guthrie, the Civil War, Jesse James, Harry Belafonte, Hank Williams. All Dylan’s influences are here in the book. You can feel the enormous creativity of the bloke in every paragraph.

And it turns out he was very sincere about folk music. He started singing in folk clubs in Minnesota, doesn’t talk about it much but the parts set in New York are great. It seems to be snowing all the time. I get these images of a boy from the Iron Range in his scarf and his fleece-jacket and motorcycle boots zipping between the coffee shops and folk clubs of Greenwich Village. Sleeping on people’s couches, talking about this and that, listening, learning, always with one eye on the ball. He hung out with singers like Mike Seeger, Dave Van Ronk, Ramblin Jack Elliot, John Hurt, The Clancey Brothers, the best, but the thing that set him apart was his own songs he wrote. The strangeness of them and the way they resonate in people’s minds. Written almost by accident he says. He jumps around in time and space in the book. Good for him. And the songs! Blowin' in the Wind, Mr. Tambourine Man, Positively 4th. Street, Love Sick. How did he do it? The book explains some of the process but here’s Dylan talking with Robert Hilburn………

"Oh, I'm not that serious a songwriter," he says, a smile on his lips. "Songs don't just come to me. They'll usually brew for a while, and you'll learn that it's important to keep the pieces until they are completely formed and glued together."

He sometimes writes on a typewriter but usually picks up a pen because he says he can write faster than he can type. "I don't spend a lot of time going over songs," Dylan says. "I'll sometimes make changes, but the early songs, for instance, were mostly all first drafts."

He doesn't insist that his rhymes be perfect. "What I do that a lot of other writers don't do is take a concept and line I really want to get into a song and if I can't figure out for the life of me how to simplify it, I'll just take it all — lock, stock and barrel — and figure out how to sing it so it fits the rhyming scheme. I would prefer to do that rather than bust it down or lose it because I can't rhyme it."

What an amazing thing. To condense a feeling or an event into a poem and set it to music. Blows ones mind it does.


Dylan denies ever being a spokesman for some generation. Load of shite, he says. He hated all the attention and the idiots trying to break into his Woodstock house. He feared for his family. Wanted to shoot the intruders, set fire to them. The only way to be free of them was to change the self they thought they knew. Throw out a lot of red herrings to 'suggest only shadows of my possible self'.

At one point he talks about changing ideologies like guitar strings…and why not? “What’s the difference? As long as my own form of certainty stayed intact, I owed nobody nothing.”

There are lots of insights into touring and recording. He tells what it's like to deal with audiences and other musicians, to sing the same songs night after night.

So has he cleared things up? Is Bob just a simple country boy? I’m not convinced. The motorcycle accident gets one line. Nothing on divorce (unless you count "....someone who is loved can inspire more fear than Machiavelli ever dreamed of.") OK it's personal, none of my business but I could have used a bit more blood on the tracks. Then again perhaps he tried to lay it out and maybe he doesn’t understand it all anymore than I do. The book is like his songs. I’m still confused but that’s OK. People are complicated creatures and it’s a great read anyway.

Dylan had a boat. Got wrecked on a reef off Panama. He mentions it in 'Chronicles'...a 65 footer, must have been a beauty...Jimmy talks about it too...

Jimmy Buffett, rock singer "Boat talk"
"I overheard the talk at the next table. Water Pearl was in the harbor, and everyone was talking about whether or not the owner was on board. She was a beautiful traditional Beguia schooner that had been built on the island and was a home away from home to a Minnesota boy named Zimmerman or to those who don't know, Bob Dylan ... 'The boss' was on board and heard I was in town as well and asked if I wanted to come out and see the boat and have lunch...
"We didn't talk music. We talked boats over lunch ... He gave me a tour of Water Pearl, and I can still smell that unique combination of pitch, canvas, and wood that is the essence of a traditional sailing rig ... I have seen Bob on a number of occasions since then, but that was the last time I saw Water Pearl. She foundered on a reef off Panama a few years later and went down." (Gustavia, St. Barts, 1980s)
(From "A Pirate Looks at Fifty," by Jimmy Buffett)

Robert liked a bit of country pie too....

Joe Eszterhas, screenwriter
"Whiskey, coke and women"
"I'd waited in the living room of a Denver hotel suite at eight one morning for Bob Dylan to emerge from his bedroom. A half-full quart of Jim Bream stood on the living room cocktail table, along with three or four broken lines of coke. A pair of black silver-toed cowboy boots was under the table. One girl came out of Bob's bedroom, then another, then another. They looked tired and sleepy and were scantily and hastily dressed. They said hi in a shy and embarrassed way and then they left. Five minutes later, Bob came out, bare-chested and barefoot, wearing jeans, his hair an airborne jungle, his complexion graveyard gray. He sat down at the cocktail table, took a long slug of Jim Beam, did a line of coke, smiled, and said, 'Howya doin?'" (late 1970s)
(From "American Rhapsody," by Joe Eszterhas)

And then there's James Damiano.

Full English Breakfast.

I'll spare you the details of our nocturnal coupling and skip to breakfast. Coffee and croissants. If I'd had my way I'd go for the Full English but Samantha won't hear of it. Bad for the old ticker.

She draws my attention to a picture on the wall of her breakfast nook.

"I think I've seen that somewhere before" I say.

"You probably did Dick. A print. Present from Simon. I'm thinking of selling it."

Sam comes with me to the station. We walk through Cambridge, along the old streets past the market the churches and the colleges chatting about this and that.

And I wondered what I was going to do? I could stay in England I suppose. Maybe Samantha would like that. But what about Millie? And Oscar? If I don’t help him get his treasure back we don’t have much of a story line. On the other hand I might just dump Oscar, he's served his purpose. And I fancy a slow bit of sailng through the Leeward Islands on my own. There’s a few islands I haven’t seen. Always fancied the Grenadines.

And let’s not forget Arthur. I got the whole story from Simon of what happened in Thailand. That will need some serious narrating. And now I have a Hockney print to sell. Anybody interested? Or shall I stick it on ebay? I could take it to the Caribbean I suppose but it may not like the climate. 

Fantan.

It looks like the sort of thing you might stumble across in a remainder bin in a used book store. Fan Tan. Ah hah I thought another obscure masterpiece cobbled together by some old alcoholic expat. Judging by the cover (never do that) it looks like a Harlequin romance set in the mysterious East. There's the exotic Asian woman in some sort of silk kimono thing and the besotted Western sailor on the ground wondering what he's got himself into. So imagine my surprise when on closer inspection the authors turn out to be Marlon Brando and Donald Cammell! Brando of course is the well known actor who spent his later years on an island near Tahiti. But what was Cammell's name doing there? Cammell was a film maker who directed `Performance' starring Mick Jagger...a destructive little shit according to Keith Richards in his autobiography `Life'. Intrigued I picked the book up....bought it and took it home. This could be good.

Well not exactly. It isn't a cliché ridden load of rubbish but it comes perilously close. The year is 1927. Anatole `Annie" Doultry is a middle aged adventurer serving six months in Hong Kong prison where he befriends a well-connected Chinese pirate. Once out he meets and falls in love with Madame Lai Choi San the pirate's beautiful boss. Together they sail around the China Seas on her sampan looking for treasure. They plan to attack a freighter full of silver, the biggest act of piracy the world has ever seen no less. One would think this might provide for some interesting character development. But Doultry is too much like Brando. He's a man of action but his mind wanders all over the place like Kurtz in `Apocalypse Now' and his philosophical musing isn't coherent. He has an aversion to authority of course, intellectual swashbuckling, that's his game but he can't stick to the plot. Here's Annie on his bunk meditating...

"However though he was once a Scot, it was not the future of the city that bore on Annie Doultry's brain, not the world's either; his own future it was, or would be. The reality to be expected, the facts of it. But was there such a thing as future fact? There was one for Mr. Wittgenstein, indeed."

Huh? There's a kind of surreal madness about the book that kept me turning the pages but a lot of the writing is pretty bad. Fortunately there are steamy sex scenes to make up for it. There's plenty of action including a typhoon, oriental intrigue and hand-to hand-combat. There's even a reference to the butter scene in `Last Tango' which should amuse movie buffs. It's a strange book, full of perverse little asides, and it all takes place against a background of the revolution in China when the Nationalists and the Communists and others were forming temporary alliances.

To be fair it should probably be described as a treatment rather than a novel. And it turns out that putting Brando's name on the cover is a publishing trick. Cammell wrote it. In fact the best part of the book comes at the end where film writer David Thomson explains how the book came to be written. Cammell had tried to get Brando for `Performance'. Brando was in hospital at the time after scalding his private parts with hot coffee. Anyway he turned the offer down. Later, with Brando weighing about 300lbs due to ice-cream addiction Cammell tried again. They had a complex, almost self-destructive, kind of relationship. The book did get written but getting it published was another matter. Brando baulked again. Maybe he was ashamed of it or maybe he just enjoyed tormenting Cammell. Anyway Cammell shot himself and Brando died. The twists and turns of the publishing process would make a good book in themselves I thought.

I should add that the author(s) owe a lot to "I Sailed with Chinese Pirates" by Aleko E. Lilius (The Mellifont Press - 1930 and Oxford University Press - 1991)

Facing facts.

Happy New Year. Ever get the feeling that one of these days you’ll switch on the telly and somebody will say...“We interrupt our normal programming to bring you Armageddon…”

“Oh gawd, not bloody Armageddon, they said it was ‘Eastenders’...”

I know, I know, it's no laughing matter but there's been a lot of talk about atom bombs and such lately so I expect some of you are wondering what the Big One will really mean to you and your family. What will it be like to watch your loved ones getting incinerated or dying a slow death from radiation poisoning? And what does happen after one dies a slow horrible death? Will it be Oblivion? Or The Rapture?

Is there anything we can do about it then Dick you ask? Will we get any warning? Will millions of the World Community die or just the brown ones? Who's finger is actually on the nukular button these days anyway? Who will win ‘Dancing With The Stars’? Where’s that pizza I ordered? These and other vexing questions will race through your mind in the final moments. Yes, it's all a bit of a worry I know but don't despair. There may be social chaos, severe ecological damage, and perhaps even minor changes in the earth's orbit but that doesn’t mean it’s the end of the world. Of course if you get caught in the actual blast you’re shit out of luck but a lot of unpleasantness can be avoided if you take the right precautions. Those with access to government facilities might even enjoy it.

As steerforth correctly observes: "There is nothing remarkable about this building on the outside. It looks like a poorly-designed 1950s bungalow, but once you enter the front door it becomes a different story..."

Lots of bulk between you and any nasty radioactivity is the key. You can’t get enough bulk. Well-equipped religious troglodytes should do fine but the rest of you (John Cleese voice) will just have to form an orderly queue at your local Tube Station or find an abandoned coal-mine or something. If all else fails you can huddle behind the closest available well-protected bulky person. Or just get digging.

Bilge.

I get barraged with questions about my writing. People want to know why I do it. It's such crap they say, why do you bother? Well it’s something to do basically and I find it therapeutic. If people like to read it so much the better. Also I don’t so much write as narrate.

I haven’t always been a narrator. In fact if you had told me 50 odd years ago that one day I would be narrating I would have given you a funny look. Tell the truth I don’t think I even knew what narrating was.

I met a real writer, Anonymous, in the British Virgin Islands. Place called Foxy’s Beach Bar. We got chatting and Anonymous asked me if I fancied doing a bit of narrating. I said why not? I’ll give it a go. I warned him it may get a bit politically incorrect but he said that’s OK. Just be yourself.

Anonymous has written a few books and he’s lead an interesting life….lots of changes. He’s met lots of people, lived in different places and he feels like writing about it. But he doesn’t want to write straight autobiography so he fictionalizes it. He doesn’t like talking about himself. He’s been interviewed a few times and finds the process painful. Some childhood trauma maybe? I don’t like to ask.

The truth is all relative anyway. We all have our own versions. Facts and fiction get mixed up over time so why not just write and see what happens. Truth is in the fiction. I think Kingsley Amis said that. Or maybe it was Martin.

So what am I working on? Today it’s the bloody bilge pump. It’s a used one I picked up cheap in Jamaica and it’s been nothing but trouble.

My narrating process is nothing special. The author gives me a basic outline and I add my own tone to it. Then the editor has a look through it and Bob’s your uncle. It’s not that difficult actually. My head is full of memories so I just let them out. Hopefully it all makes some kind of sense.

How does my narration differ from others of its genre? Good question. Somebody once called it Faction. I like to think of it as a post-modern exploration into the nature of reality. I’m no James Joyce or Vladimir Nabokov or David Foster Wallace but I do my best.