There may be more work written about the period of fame which still defines Bob Dylan than the amount Dylan wrote during it. But it is up to an audience to figure out which of these books on Dylan’s 1960s heyday are worthwhile. Sean Egan pulls no punches in a brutally honest assessment of Dylan in his latest book, Decade of Dissent. What Egan succeeds with here is writing well of a topic booming in popularity thanks to adaptations, an ongoing, modern presence by the artist, and a history where there are more words written about it than from it. Sifting through the history of these formative years is to rake over long-ploughed fields, and yet Egan comes through with some nuggets of inspired perspective. It is what sets his work on Decade of Dissent apart from other biographies.
And yet Egan sometimes lives in his own bubble. He discards Dylan’s third album, The Times They Are a-Changin’, as “not good” and writes often in a way that the layman, the passing fan, may not understand. They may even find Decade of Dissent hard to follow. His elongations, the constant commas and synonyms to buff out the simpler points, are frustrating. An annoyance of having to read and re-read between the lines to discover something which is neither groundbreaking nor insightful is frequent. This is not thumb-sucking simplicity, but there is no need to make simple facts sound complex as a way of creating a faux new point. It is all the same facts and figures of the time, dressed up in an often bulked-up prose. Songs are referred to not as tracks or releases but as “sound paintings” and it is this writing style, which will of course work for those of a more aloof mindset, which makes Decade of Dissent a tricky book to tackle. Not a point on reading ages, but a “how much of this style can you stomach” problem.
Amid the projection of personal experience and opinion as fact, there are slices of wisdom and interesting avenues of thought. Egan touches on the link between Dylan and John F. Kennedy, though for the sake of keeping a narrative tone, leaves off the contemporary revisit from Dylan to a period which allegedly shook him to his core. Egan presents a great understanding of some songs, misses the point entirely with others. For all the backhanded praise present for Dylan, he disavows songs like My Back Pages as going against the expected structure of what a poet should and could do. The very act of rebellion against the point, be it blues stanzas with too many words or the objections of what the role of a poet in society is, makes Egan sound stuffy and conformist, projecting what he believes is right on songs he says sound wrong.
Egan may write flippantly about Dylan at times, but often, his harshness holds water. Head back to those works which he finds trouble with, and the likelihood is, the emotive impression these songs give us have masked the problems well. But therein lies the problem of any criticism or analysis. Should we let our hearts do all the talking? It is hard not to, for many, when it comes to Dylan. Egan may write against the layman, but he writes with honesty and conviction. Harsh truths and a few out-there points made about Dylan makes Decade of Dissent an ultimately satisfying read, one where the gusto of the author threatens to collapse the whole project. But persevere through the showy and winding phraseology and you find a solid encounter with Dylan as an artist who changed the world. How he did it is explained to an acceptable degree.
