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psteve's review
3.0
Devoted to "untangling the relationship between New York and Dylan."
The book gets its stars from the maps in the front, keyed to specific named locations, something I've wanted on several trips to New York, which is valuable. The bulk of the book, though, in its discussions of the various times Dylan spent in New York, is pretty much a retread of several biographies and the memoir, and doesn't really bring a lot new to the party. Those who don't know the biography probably won't get a lot out of this because it's pretty brief and doesn't go into much detail about the work; those who do know the biography will only see its shallowness.
One thing: the list of references to New York on Page 87 misses at least three lyric references to New York places, and there are maybe more. I'll leave those as an exercise for the reader.
The book gets its stars from the maps in the front, keyed to specific named locations, something I've wanted on several trips to New York, which is valuable. The bulk of the book, though, in its discussions of the various times Dylan spent in New York, is pretty much a retread of several biographies and the memoir, and doesn't really bring a lot new to the party. Those who don't know the biography probably won't get a lot out of this because it's pretty brief and doesn't go into much detail about the work; those who do know the biography will only see its shallowness.
One thing: the list of references to New York on Page 87 misses at least three lyric references to New York places, and there are maybe more. I'll leave those as an exercise for the reader.
h2oetry's review
4.0
Good overview for those unfamiliar with his biography, and a decent reminder for those of us who've read plenty about him. Added an extra star to the rating for the three maps alone. I now live in NYC and one of my first goals was to visit all the Bob Dylan sites, which I've now done a few times. This book helped that endeavor quite a bit.
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