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Show I BOOK BUZZ Dylan's autobiography full of entertaining anecdotes Larry McShane THE ASSOCIATED Authors give a quirky look at politics, society BOB DYLAN PRESS ny book that features Bob Dylan sharing a A: ' greasy hamburger backstage with Tiny Tim is going to get your attention especially when the story is told by the ordinarily reclu- J Trillin's Calvin He Sails: Thein Bush sive Dylan himself. Dylan's much ant icipated autobiography, "Chronicles Volume One," is chockfull of such entertaining anecdotes. There was the time he saw the ghost of John Wilkes Booth in a basement barroom mirror in lower Manhattan. And the days he spent playing Woody Guthrie songs in a hospital room with Woody Guthrie. And there's the first person to recognize young Dylan's musical acumen: professional wrestler Gorgeous George. "He winked and seemed to mouth the phrase, 'You're " making it come alive,' Dylan "I writes. never forgot it. It was all the recognition and encouragement I would need for years." The book begins with Dylan's early days in New York City, signing his recording contract with music impresario John Hammond. The transplanted Minnesota boy recounts his early days in Greenwich Village, hanging out with Tiny Tim and meeting heroes like Dave Van Ronk. Later, Dylan recounts a dinner with U2 singer Bono, who arrived for the meal toting a case of Guinness. "He's like that guy in the old movie, the one who beats up a rat with Rhyme" Itilt W KM his bare hands and wrings a confession out of him" Dylan writes. "If Bono had come to America in the early part of , the century he would have been a cop." The writing is brisk and entertaining, offering some insights into a performer who remains a cipher to many. There's no real format; Dylan jumps from providing a laundry list of his reading material to a description of performing at the Gaslight to tips on playing poker (Dylan, FYI, was quick to fold and not much of and getting irritated when Johnny Carson didn't invite the singer to sit on his couch. Wonder how Bobby Zimmerman became Bob Dylan? He briefly considered taking the stage name "Bob AUyn," but rejected it as a name more fit for "a used-ca- r salesman." lixpire13004. -- ' v I Ogden Nash: "Obliviously On He Sails" will be provoking to mean-spirite- g some, and to others. Aaron Lanskyk's "Outwitting History: The Amazing Adventures of a Man Who Saved thought-provokin- Over a Million Yiddish Books" is a sparkling example of the no- , tion that one person can make a gigantic difference in the world. As a graduate student, Lansky became convinced of the need to save what he could of the world's diminishing supply of Yiddish texts & PI aa""' this ad & receive I ' ; "$10 offany service e tl JiHMMiwt D (Hew , "Because they pay too much in taxesTo feed the poor and fight the axisThe rich are truly disommoded.It spoils the fun of being loadedVSo we should tax the poor insteadA tax on bread." alms, or day-ol- d Witty and biting, but not lull mm I Mention V premium-grad- a bluffer). But there's no attempt to tell his story chronologically or in any linear form. At one point, he writes about watching Joe Tex perform on "The Tonight Show," Open Monday - Saturday 9 am - 5 pm hi is clearly not designed to warm the cockles of Republican hearts. Collected mostly from the lib--' era! (not a pejorative term in everyone's vocabulary) periodical "The Nation," TrilUn's poetry takes the entire Bush admin-- : istration to task for dishonesty; insensitivity, cronyism. Trillin is a very funny man and his poetry a clever delight, a sort of CHRONICLES 1nei m By LAURA WADLEY Leaf T)a) Spa 370-399- 0 ,1355 North University Ave. Suite 160 Provo as he tried to determine what "otherness" it was about the ' Jews that made people fear and persecute them! "Outwitting History" is a book about language and literature, but even more about the people who spoke and wrote the language, and who embraced the culture. Aaron shares these characters with us, from the aging communist who vehemently, publicly denounced anyone believed Stalin had ever laid a finger on Russia's Yiddish literati (he had them all executed in one' fell night) to Lansky's young, determined team of helpers who rescued hundreds of Yiddish books from a dump-stthrough the course of a rainy night. Even if you have no notion of Yiddish and the Jewish culture associated with it, this book is fine, heartening reading, filled with people you will want to remember. Alexander McCall Smith is back, but without his Precious. (Not that Precious, but Precious Ramotswe, the delightful heroine of Smith's Botswana mys- - . tery series that begins with "The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency.) Unfortunately, his new heroine, Isabel Dalhousie of "The CALVIN TRILLIN Obliviously On He Sails er SBjirata 'TOW- AARON 'n Sunday Philosophy Club," is something of a smarty-pant- While Precious Ramotswe conveyed oodles of information and wisdom in the most disarming manner, Isabel is more pointed and condescending. Snooty, in a word. "The Sunday Philosophy . Club" is a mystery, the puzzle being why and how a young man came to fall to his death at a concert by the Icelandic Symphony Orchestra. Isabel, who witnessed the fall, and who believes she was the last person the young man saw before he perished, feels morally responsible to discover why. Smith tells a good story, highly readable, with interesting characters. As with his Precious Ramotswe books, this volume is much more about people and relationships than it is about plot, and "The Sunday Philosophy Club" provides pleasant, ii i thoughtful reading. Good enough just not as good. I Laura Wadley is a librarian with the Provo City Library. lawawprovo.lib.ut.us. www.cougarblue.com r |
