Chronicles, Volume One

<i>"I'd come from a long ways off and had started a long ways down. But now destiny was about to manifest itself. I felt like it was looking right at me and nobody else."</i> So writes Bob Dylan in <i>Chronicles: Volume One,</i> his remarkable book exploring critical junctures in his life and career. <br /><br />Through Dylan's eyes and open mind, we see Greenwich Village, circa 1961, when he first arrives in Manhattan. Dylan's New York is a magical city of possibilities -- smoky, nightlong parties; literary awakenings; transient loves and unbreakable friendships. Elegiac observations are punctuated by jabs of memories, penetrating and tough. With the book's side trips to New Orleans, Woodstock, Minnesota and points west, <i>Chronicles: Volume One</i> is an intimate and intensely personal recollection of extraordinary times.<br /><br />By turns revealing, poetical, passionate and witty, <i>Chronicles: Volume One</i> is a mesmerizing window on Bob Dylan's thoughts and influences. Dylan's voice is distinctively American: generous of spirit, engaged, fanciful and rhythmic. Utilizing his unparalleled gifts of storytelling and the exquisite expressiveness that are the hallmarks of his music, Bob Dylan turns <i>Chronicles: Volume One</i> into a poignant reflection on life, and the people and places that helped shape the man and the art.