October release for 'Bob Dylan by Greil Marcus, Writings 1968-2010'

(Picador)

Greil Marcus has been reviewing, researching, and analyzing the music of Bob Dylan since the late 1960s. The first four words of his 1970 Rolling Stone review of Dylan's Self Portrait have become the stuff of legend - "What is this s*&@?". It led to his departure from the magazine for five years.

In 1975, he wrote the liner notes for Dylan and The Band's Basement Tapes double album. His book, Invisible Republic, later reissued under the original title The Old Weird America , delved into the roots of these recordings, which led to the re-release of Harry Smith's Anthology of Folk Music.

Marcus is currently working on a compilation of his articles and reviews about Bob Dylan. The following is from the introduction of a new interview published by PopMatters:

It’s been a busy time for Marcus. . .This fall, PublicAffairs will release Bob Dylan by Greil Marcus, Writings 1968-2010, which Marcus describes as “a collection of nearly everything I’ve written on Dylan outside of Invisible Republic/The Old Weird America and Like a Rolling Stone. It’s long. I don’t know how long; I’m still working on it."

(PublicAffairs)

Here's some additional information from the PublicAffairs website: 

HARDCOVER
ISBN 978-1586488314
Pub date: 10/26/10
Price: $27.95/33.95 Canada
6 1/8 x 9 1/4
400 pages

Marcus first became aware of Dylan in 1963, after seeing him guest at a Joan Baez concert in New Jersey. He tells this humorous story of purchasing The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan soon after:

Who knew that the cover of that album—two young people facing the world from a snowy city street—would sound down through the years with as much force as its songs would? Certainly not me; I couldn’t figure out why the songs on my record didn’t match the ones listed on the jacket. There was even one with a band. “This has the wrong songs on it,” I told the record store owner. “I want a good copy.” “I’ll have some in next week,” he said. But I never went back.

It is unclear if that means he just had a rare album cover, or the much sought-after early version of Freewheelin', which is one of the most valuable records ever made.

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Greil Marcus has been out promoting his new book, When That Rough God Goes Riding: Listening to Van Morrison (PublicAffairs). In the PopMatters interview, there is a discussion of the inevitable comparisons between Morrison and Dylan. Marcus also has this interesting take on Dylan's stories in Chronicles, Volume One:

Well, I loved the book. I wrote about it at one point and decided to check on some of things he said. He talked about his mother seeing Woodrow Wilson during a whistle-stop campaign in 1912, and it became pretty clear with a little research that it couldn’t have happened, that Wilson just wasn’t there at the time. But that doesn’t mean that wasn’t a story told in her family . . .

Some people jumped on the part of the book where he’s living with these people who have this incredible library, and he’s discovering all these books, and people say, “Well, that has to be a composite.” I don’t care.

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