Bob Dylan After the Fall (NYRB, November 2010)

Giles Harvey

• Bob Dylan in America

• Bob Dylan by Greil Marcus: Writings 1968–2010

Why Dylan Deserves It (NYRB, December 2016)

Mark Ford

That Wild Mercury Sound (LRB, December 2016)

Bob Dylan, born Robert Zimmerman, exploded onto the music scene in 1961 with his debut album, Bob Dylan, recorded in New York. He had grown up in a small mining town in Minnesota and chose the name "Dylan" possibly after the lawman Matt Dillon from the TV Western Gunsmoke.

• The Bootleg Series, Vol. 12:  The Cutting Edge 1965-66 

Liaisons Dangereuses (NYRB, July 2001)

John Leonard

• Positively 4th Street:The Life and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Fariña,and Richard Fariña Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 328 pp., $25.00

• Down the Highway: The Life of Bob Dylan Grove, 527 pp., $27.50

Prodigal Bob Dylan (NYRB, February 2015)

Dan Chiasson

• Dylan’s Never Ending Tour

• The Lyrics: Bob Dylan Simon and Schuster, 960 pp., $299.00

Judas’ Gift (LRB, January 2012)

In 1965-66, Bob Dylan revolutionized popular music with his electric tour, culminating in a famous show in Manchester Free Trade Hall. When a disgruntled folkie shouted 'Judas', Dylan responded by ordering his band to 'play fucking loud', and the crowd was left stunned by his rendition of 'Like a Rolling Stone'. This moment was a reminder that betrayal can be a transformational act, and that someone matters to you if they can be betrayed or betray you.

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Where Wonders Await Us (NYRB, December 2007)

Tim Flannery

• The Deep: The Extraordinary Creatures of the Abyss

• The Silent Deep: The Discovery, Ecology and Conservation of the Deep Sea

Here Be Monsters (NYRB, December 2013)

Two new books about sea monsters place maps at the heart of scientific marine inquiry

• Sea Monsters on Medieval and Renaissance Maps

• Sea Monsters: A Voyage Around the World’s Most Beguiling Map

• Witches and Wicked Bodies

Splash (NYRB, March 2021)

Fantastic beliefs, in the form of false claims and urban legends, have been traveling irresistibly since the eighteenth century. The effect today has been amplified by social media; mermaid sightings rank in popularity alongside those of aliens, angels, and unicorns.

• Merpeople: A Human History

At the Pool (LRB, June 2018)

At the Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables, Florida, Madonna once requested the pool all to herself, and it's easy to see why.

Gerard Byrne (LRB, March 2011)

Gerard Byrne's exhibition at the MK Gallery in Milton Keynes, titled 'Case Study: Loch Ness (Some Possibilities and Problems), 2001-11', draws on a decade of research on the Loch Ness Monster to explore the complex relationship between word and image in our modern age. Combining his own works with new ones, Byrne's wryly humorous exhibition examines the conventions of photographic reportage, the place of landscape images in contemporary art, and the many sightings of Nessie since the early 1930s.

Into the Wrecks (NYRB, July 2021)

What do sunken ships reveal about the history of war at sea?

• War at Sea: A Shipwrecked History from Antiquity to the Cold War

Life Soup (LRB, April 2022)

Jean-Paul Sartre's experiment with mescaline resulted in intense hallucinations, including an onslaught of octopuses and crabs that followed him for a year. Susanne Wedlich's book, Slime, examines the physical and phenomenological aspects of sliminess, from its innate moral quality to the way it triggers revulsion in us. The concept of slime has a long and varied history, from Lucretius' theory of humans forming from moist soil to Lynn Margulis' theory of symbiogenesis, and even the spiritualist movement of the early 20th century. Wedlich's book further reveals the unexpected discoveries that slime can hold, from the biofilms in Shark Bay, Australia dating back 3.5 billion years, to the spiggin secreted by male sticklebacks to build their nests.

• Slime:  A Natural History 

Death of a Champion (NYRB, September 2001)

Charles Sprawson

• The Crossing: The Glorious Tragedy of the First Man to Swim the English Channel

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Heir of a Dark History (NYRB, October 2002)

J.M. Coetzee

• After Nature

Conspiracy of Silence (NYRB, February 2003)

Charles Simic

• On the Natural History of Destruction

When the Russians Came (NYRB, October 2005)

Gabriele Annan

• A Woman in Berlin: Eight Weeks in the Conquered City

The Solitary Notetaker (NYRB, August 2005)

Charles Simic

• Campo Santo

• Unrecounted

Luminous Memoir of a Lost World (NYRB, December 2008)

John Banville

The Real Woman in the Real Cupboard (LRB, June 2011)

In W.G. Sebald's The Emigrants and Jenny Erpenbeck's Visitation, two authors of German heritage examine the devastating effects of the Holocaust through different lenses. From Sebald's exploration of the silence of those affected by the events of the past to Erpenbeck's long view of modern German history, the two authors explore how the events of the 20th century can appear small in comparison to the landscape. Erpenbeck's writing style, inspired by Sebald, is characterized by long run-on sentences, a mixture of plot elements and insights, and an allegorical story of a foundling girl's struggles with childhood. Erpenbeck is interested in the menschlich aspects of life, while Heinrich Böll's short story serves as an allegory for the Third Reich. The article examines the sexual encounter between a German woman in hiding and a Red Army officer, and how the disruption of an emigrant's life can suggest the stripping of the personal from history.

• Visitation 

Sebald is my husband (LRB, December 2012)

Christmas last year, I decided to take a risk and buy my husband a book - Die Ausgewanderten by Sebald - and the decision ended up unexpectedly connecting us to a deeper understanding of our family history. As I read, I noticed parallels between Sebald’s characters and my husband, from place names, to memories, to the way he dislikes tucked in bedding. Later, I found myself making connections between this book and other people and places, from my publisher Sara Bershtel and her excitement when I told her our children were committed to learning classical instruments, to Constanze Güthenke and Anthony Grafton in Princeton, to my job as director of the Arts and Humanities at Durham University. In the end, I realised that the value of the humanities lies in the connections between people and places, and in patience bordering on silence.

• How should we - and do we - actually use the history of “western civilization”?

• How have the “threats” to Western Civilization changed between now and the mid-2000s?

My B&NR1 Recommendation this week is:

• The Pursuit of Power:  Europe 1815-1914 

… because I’m fascinated by power, how organizations get it and wield it, and I don’t really know my European history.

The Articles:

The Worst of Times? (NYRB, November 2006)

• The War of the World: Twentieth-Century Conflict and the Descent of the West

The Disappointed Lover of the West (NYRB, December 2011)

• Civilization: The West and the Rest

History and National Stupidity (NYRB, April 2006)

Arthur Schlesinger Jr.

A Message to the 21st Century (NYRB, October 2014)

The misguided search for a single, overarching ideal

Drawing the Wrong Lesson (NYRB, March 2010)

• Dangerous Games: The Uses and Abuses of History

A Cautionary Tale for Americans (NYRB, May 2005)

• The Bullet's Song: Romantic Violence and Utopia

Staying Alive in the Ruins (LRB, April 2021)

Over forty years ago, in 1980, a visiting professor of European History at Columbia University had a unique opportunity to observe the shifting definition of Western civilisation

• Ruin and Renewal:  Civilising Europe after World War Two 

C (for Crisis) (LRB, August 2009)

A historian examines the sense of crisis and fear that characterized Britain between the wars, offering an in-depth look at how people reacted to the events of the time

• The Morbid Age:  Britain between the Wars 

Echoes from the Far Side (LRB, October 2017)

A history of Europe's path to power

• The Pursuit of Power:  Europe 1815-1914 

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Internet reacts

For a more informed view of Roald Dahl I’ll point you to two articles:

Colin Burrow in the LRB (also this podcast)

Joyce Carol Oates in the NYRB

Questions I am reflecting on:

• What was compelling about Dahl’s books? How does this compare to children’s literature today? Was he “of his time” or timeless?

• Are Dahl’s children’s books influenced by and/or authentic to his character? Is this important?

  

Europeans made—and carried away—many of the most famous discoveries of the “Golden Age of Egyptology,” but Egyptians today are beginning to reclaim their own past.

• A World Beneath the Sands: The Golden Age of Egyptology (book)

• Barra and Zaman: Reading Egyptian Modernity in Shadi Abdel Salam’s The Mummy (book)

Treasures of the Sahel (NYRB, May 2020)

Howard W. French

• Sahel: Art and Empires on the Shores of the Sahara (catalog)

Three Weeks Wide (LRB, July 2022)

Geography and history have long been treated as separate fields of study, but William Camden's 1586 publication of Britannia, The Situationists of May 1968, and the earth mysteries movement of Stonehenge have all sought to bridge the gap between the two

• France:  An Adventure History (book)

‘Peru: A Journey in Time’ (LRB, February 2022)

At Machu Picchu, the ancient Inca citadel built for Emperor Pachacuti, time is viewed as a triple spiral of past, present, and future existing in simultaneous realities.

Leave me my illusions (LRB, July 2021)

In her new book, Time's Witness, Rosemary Hill examines the work of more than thirty antiquaries from the late 18th and early 19th centuries. These scholars studied mysterious inscriptions, stone circles, and ruined abbeys, gathering rusty weaponry, stained glass, and old ballads in the process.

Filberds and trinkets (TLS, July 2021)

The antiquarian pursuit of ‘non-verbal’ history

• Time’s Witness:  History in the Age of Romanticism (book)

The dead have no names (TLS, January 2020)

Archaeology and the search for narrative

• DIGGING UP BRITAIN Ten discoveries, a million years of history (book)

• WARRIOR A life of war in Anglo-Saxon Britain (book)

At the mercy of the public (TLS, April 2021)

Is it necessary to kill some statues, or could we add to them?

Out of Edo (TLS, March 2021)

The ongoing conflict over African artefacts in European hands

• LOOT Britain and the Benin Bronzes (book)

• THE BRUTISH MUSEUMS The Benin Bronzes, colonial violence and cultural restitution (book)

  

Joan Mitchell was a Romantic whose paintings join nature and feelings with an operatic lyricism.

• Joan Mitchell (catalog)

Landscapes of the Imagination (NYRB, 2021)

Jesse Murry’s abstract seascapes enabled him to explore the inner world of the mind while infusing his art with his life as a gay Black man.

Carolee Schneemann (LRB, 2022)

Carolee Schneemann was a pioneering artist whose work explored the representation of women's experiences, exploring topics such as feminine creativity, taboos, and the male gaze. Her work often elicited intense identification from viewers ranging from passionate devotion and sexual fantasy to fury, and her reclaiming of overlooked experiences of women is gaining more attention since her death.

Hopscotch on a Mondrian (LRB, 2022)

Florine Stettheimer was a wealthy New York artist whose works blended femininity with satire and wit. She was present for some of the formative events of modern art, and was also close friends with Marcel Duchamp. In 2019, MoMA opened a gallery dedicated to Stettheimer.

• FLORINE STETTHEIMER:  A Biography  (book)

Helen Frankenthaler:

Helen Frankenthaler was an American abstract expressionist painter whose work is characterized by its vivid, large-scale ‘soak-stain’ paintings, big, bold gestures, and recognisable forms that emerge and disappear again.

Helen Frankenthaler (LRB, 2021)

Picasso is your daddy (TLS, 2021)

A portrait of the artist, but only as a young woman

• FIERCE POISE: Helen Frankenthaler and 1950s New York (book)

Ball Don’t Lie (NYRB, 2020)

Robert Scoop Jackson’s ‘The Game Is Not a Game: The Power, Protest, and Politics of American Sports’

• THE GAME IS NOT A GAME: The Power, Protest, and Politics of American Sports (book)

Kaepernick Was Right (LRB, 2022)

Colin Kaepernick's 2022 Netflix series, Colin in Black and White, highlights the former NFL quarterback's struggle against the racial hierarchy of American football while raising the question of why he loves the sport so much, even though it is gladiatorial and intensely violent.

Lancelot v. Galahad (LRB, 2022)

The Last Dance, a documentary about the 1997-98 Chicago Bulls, evoked nostalgia for the '90s and highlighted the generational shift in the way basketball is played. These days, the analytics crowd tend to focus on statistical abstractions to measure success, while Knicks fans can relate to the difficulty of competing with an unbeatable opponent.

• BLOOD IN THE GARDEN:  The Flagrant History of the 1990s New York Knicks 

Better on TV (LRB, 2020)

From its humble beginnings as a game played against a wall at Eton College to its modern form popularized by Walter Wingfield, tennis has come a long way. Although the game has been exclusionary at times, it has been kept alive by enthusiasts, celebrities, and even the British Empire.

• A PEOPLE’S HISTORY OF TENNIS (book)

The players and the Games (TLS, 2021)

Tales of a legendary Japanese volleyball team

• THE WITCHES OF THE ORIENT (streaming)

Antigone on Your Knee (LRB, 2020)

In a democratic age, anyone can be a potential tragic figure.

• A CULTURAL HISTORY OF TRAGEDY:  Vols I-VI  (book)

Vexes as it teaches (TLS, 2021)

A provocative study of the tragic arts.

• TRAGEDY (book)

Let us now tell sad stories (TLS, 2021)

Why we might write about trauma.

• TRAUMA: Writing about art and mental health (book)

A Route of Evanescence, (1489)

BY EMILY DICKINSON

A Route of Evanescence,
With a revolving Wheel –
A Resonance of Emerald
A Rush of Cochineal –
And every Blossom on the Bush
Adjusts it’s tumbled Head –
The Mail from Tunis – probably,
An easy Morning’s Ride –

A Searing Bolt of Turquoise (NYRB, 2021)

Hummingbirds, whose psychedelic feathers cover even more remarkable physiological adaptations, are dying out at alarming rates owing to climate change, but humans have long had a deadly fascination with these startling creatures.

• The Glitter in the Green: In Search of Hummingbirds (book)

• Hummingbird Salamander (book)

• Cross Pollination: Heade, Cole, Church, and Our Contemporary Moment (exhibit catalog)

• On Edward Hicks (book)

Consider the Hummingbird (LRB, 2022)

At the Great Exhibition of 1851, Queen Victoria was captivated by the beauty of John Gould's display of 1500 hummingbirds, representing 320 different species. The smallest of these birds, the male bee hummingbird, is only as heavy as half a teaspoon of sugar and possesses iridescent feathers that change colour with the light. This beauty caused a craze in London and Paris, with the birds being pinned to turbans and arranged in groups on summer bonnets, leading to overhunting and the founding of the Society for the Protection of Birds in 1904.

Consider the Stork (LRB, 2021)

Storks are thought to bring luck to their roosts and are admired for their intelligence, heroism, and size. They have been hunted for food and are now endangered, but recently reintroduced to the UK as part of a rewilding project.

Diary: Gaby Wood Draws an Albatross (LRB, 2020)

When she met the albatross, she was amazed by its majestic beauty and melancholic spirit. With a wingspan of up to 3.5 meters, the wandering albatross is the largest of its species and is capable of dynamic soaring.

Old World Warblers (LRB, 2022)

Songbirds, which are the most widespread vertebrates on land, consist of 4500 species, all of which share the same structure of vocal organ and ability to learn new noises. It is believed that the first songbirds evolved in the southern hemisphere and eventually spread around the world, with populations becoming established in Asia, Europe, and North and South America. This dispersal of songbirds is thought to have been aided by climate fluctuations and the development of unique calls. The songbird radiation even reached the Galápagos Islands, which were the inspiration for the first working theory of evolution.

• The Largest Avian Radiation: The Evolution of Perching Birds, or the Order Passeriformes (book)

Birders of a feather (TLS, 2022)

Bustards, dodos, ibises and other sources of an enduring obsession

• Flight from Grace (book)

• Avian Illuminations: A Cultural History of Birds (book)

• Birds and Us: A 12,000 Year History: From Cave Art to Conservation (book)

The Illusion of the First Person (NYRB, 2022)

A historical survey of the personal essay shows it to be the purest expression of the lie that individual subjectivity exists prior to the social formations that gave rise to it.

Getting better acquainted (TLS, 2022)

The growth of clarity and honesty in the American Republic of Letters

• THE GLORIOUS AMERICAN ESSAY: One hundred essays from colonial times to the present (book)

The rest of the iceberg (TLS, 2022)

Three guides to writing personal narrative

• WRITE IT ALL DOWN: How to put your life on the page (book)

• YOUR STORY MATTERS: Find your voice, sharpen your skills, tell your story (book)

• BODY WORK: The radical power of personal narrative (book)

The Story of the Story of the Story (NYRB, 2020)

Reading novels can help us understand ourselves and our lives in a way that living cannot, and Benjamin's essay encourages us to look beyond mere righteousness and see that the novel can help us comprehend what it means to live, have lived, and construct a life.

• THE STORYTELLER ESSAYS (book)

The People We Know Best (NYRB, 2021)

Readers love fictional characters almost as if they were real people. Literary scholars are just starting to take them more seriously.

• CHARACTER: Three Inquiries in Literary Studies (book)

• CHARACTER: The History of a Cultural Obsession (book)

• CHARACTER AS FORM (book)

• BALZAC’S LIVES (book)

Making something of ourselves (TLS, 2021)

The history of character, and how we shape it

• CHARACTER: The History of a Cultural Obsession (book)

• BECOMING DUCHESS GOLDBLATT (book)

Uncanny Elizabethan autofiction (TLS, 2020)

Two ways of understanding early modern personhood

• PAPER MONSTERS: Persona and literary culture in Elizabethan England (book)

• RENAISSANCE PERSONHOOD: Materiality, taxonomy, process (book)