Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Bob Dylan is an iconic figure in American musical and cultural history, lauded by Time magazine as one of the hundred most important people of the twentieth century. For nearly fifty years the singer-songwriter has crafted his unique brand of music, from his 1962 self-titled debut album to 2009's #1 hit Together Through Life , appealing to everyone from baby boomers to the twenty-somethings who storm the stage at his concerts.

In Bob Dylan: Like a Complete Unknown , literary scholar and music critic David Yaffe considers Dylan from four perspectives: his complicated relationship to blackness (including his involvement in the civil rights movement and a secret marriage with a black backup singer), the underrated influence of his singing style, his fascinating image in films, and his controversial songwriting methods that have led to charges of plagiarism. Each chapter travels from the 1960s to the present, offering a historical perspective on the many facets of Dylan's life and career, exploring the mystery that surrounds the enigmatic singer and revealing the complete unknown Dylan.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

With this book, Yaffe (English, Syracuse Univ.) adds a fascinating exploration of Dylan's music to the profusion of Dylan studies, which include Sean Wilentz's valuable Bob Dylan in America (2010). Yaffee offers not a biography but rather a somewhat brief exploration in four chapters of various aspects of Dylan's output over the last 50 years. He begins by looking at Dylan's "cawing, derisive voice" before moving, in chapter 2, to a deft discussion of Dylan on film, including Martin Scorsese's documentary No Direction Home: Bob Dylan (2005) and Todd Haynes's creative I'm Not There (2007), as well as Dylan's own curious Renaldo and Clara (1978) and Masked and Anonymous (2003), the latter directed by Larry Charles. Chapter 3 focuses on Dylan's intimate relationship with African American music and musicians, including his 2010 appearance in a Black History Month concert for President Barack Obama. The final chapter, "Don't Steal, Don't Lift," analyzes Dylan's creative borrowing of lyrics and tunes from other musicians and writers (Yaffe says that "Dylan has been saying all along that he loves and he thieves...."). The book includes a helpful bibliography and a listing of 70 top Dylan songs. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers. R. D. Cohen emeritus, Indiana University Northwest

Kirkus Book Review

A slim volume of essays adds more than a footnote to the long shelf of Dylan books.After a recent spate of Dylan studies by prominent academicsSean Wilentz and Christopher Ricks, in addition to the comprehensive Greil Marcus anthologythere would seem to be nothing left to say about this celebrated and frequently confounding artist.Yet music critic Yaffe (English/Syracuse Univ; Fascinating Rhythm: Reading Jazz in American Writing,2005, etc.) sheds some fresh light, or at least offers a provocative perspective. His four thematic chapters "attempt to elucidate the difficult pleasure that is Dylan, with his nasal voice, oblique lyrics, complicated relation to race, and controversial appropriation of words and music." Obviously passionate about his subject, on whom he teaches a course, Yaffe writes that "while he is perhaps miscategorized as a poet, he is underrated as a singer." The author later makes the far more startling assertion that "Dylan's relationship to race is unique," and that "the story of how Dylan got his groove back by becoming his own soul sister is also a distinctly American narrative of racial appropriation and sexual exploitation, of selling out, getting saved, and owning up." For Yaffe, Dylan's controversial (and short-lived) "born again" phase is as much about race (and gospel music) and eros as it is about Christianity. Pretty much every page could launch a debate, though Yaffe is one of the few to swallow whole the assertion by Mavis Staples that the young Dylan would have married her if she had consented. More than any other recent Dylan book, this one frequently anticipates his death, the unthinkable prospect of no more Dylan (though there will be plenty more Dylan books).Not for the neophyte, but fascinating for obsessives who think they know everything and want to know more.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.