As I - and the world - await the coming of the third in Dylan's late series of masterworks, it is appropriate to once again ask: what is the greatest work of art of the 21st century?I confess to a short list of one: Bob Dylan's album, which had been set for release on 9-11, "Love and Theft".
There have been major works in cinema, by Wong Kar-wai and Lynch and Ozon; several good collections of poetry, a handful of novels, some art installations - but without a doubt, the most troubling, complex, uncanny and relevant work has been "Love and Theft".
This is an album I return to, often, for a simple reason. Bob Dylan is the American Shakespeare, in the sense that Harold Bloom has talked about Shakespeare, and this is his late masterwork - his King Lear, if you will. Nothing I can write will sustain these claims - you must listen to the album.
What I will say is that Dylan has achieved an extraordinary texture and flow of voice, music and meaning here - and I mean extraordinary by the standards of the creator of Blonde on Blonde.
What to listen for: that American ecstatic calling forth of place names associated with the Civil War; each song's layering of characters, creating a Joycean level of stream of consciousness, while also commenting on his own previous work and the work of Shakespeare; and continual, startling shifts in phrasing, phrases and intent, so that a striking malevolence, and threat of violence asserts itself from time to time, in the midst of what appear to be the reminsicences of old, retired veterans of campaigns both military and amorous; I have mentioned Joyce and Shakespeare, but the comedy and existential emptiness openly confronted several times in the songs (especially "Floater (Too Much To Ask)" and "Sugar Baby") is akin to Beckett.
There is a sense in which Dylan has conjured up (to exorcise or excoriate?) America's deepest conflicts within its antebellum heart, to represent (presciently it must be said) what is currently unfolding in Iraq. Regardless of its political dimensions, however, the 12 songs on this album are a permanent part of the American Song Book - and no current poet or novelist in America is working at this depth of grave intent.
We may wish to resist American influence in many spheres (and I do, I do), but with regards to music and vocal expression of the lyric word, the American master, Bob Dylan, is very much the universal artist of our time, in much the same way that, 100 years ago, Henrik Ibsen could be said to be.
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