Who Is That Man In Search of the Real Bob Dylan [Paperback]

Now in paperback and with a new foreword, a kaleidoscopic look at the many faces of Bob Dylan, legendary folk singer-songwriter and winner of the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature.

For almost half a century, Bob Dylan has been a primary catalyst in rock's shifting sensibilities. Few American artists are as important, beloved, and endlessly examined, yet he remains something of an enigma. Who, we ask, is the real Bob Dylan? Is he Bobby Zimmerman, yearning to escape Hibbing, Minnesota, or the Woody Guthrie wannabe playing Greenwich Village haunts? Folk Messiah, Born-Again Bob, Late-Elvis Dylan, Jack Fate, or Living National Treasure? InWho Is That Man?David Dalton--cultural historian, journalist, screenwriter, and novelist--paints a revealing portrait of the rock icon, ingeniously exposing the three-card monte games he plays with his persona.

Guided by Dalton's cutting-edge insights and myth-debunking point of view,Who Is That Man?follows Dylan's imaginative life, integrating actual events with Dylan's words and those of the people who know him most intimately. Drawing upon Dylan's friends and fellow eyewitnesses--including Marianne Faithfull, Allen Ginsberg, Peter Stampfel , Larry Ratso Sloman, Eric Andersen, Nat Hentoff, Andrew Oldham, Nat Finkelstein, and others--this book will provide a new perspective on the man, the myth, and the musical era that forged them both. Mr. Dalton, a founding editor ofRolling Stone, dates back so far in Dylan watching that he was all but present at the creation. He writes not just about Mr. Dylan but about what it's like to have lived in close psychic and musical proximity to him for so long. Janet Maslin,The New York Times [Dalton's] attempts at exposing, debunking, and celebrating the essence of Robert Zimmerman's Dylanness, and vice versa, make for an intriguing, often amusing, vision quest. Dylan's quirks, kinks, and inscrutability are fascinating fodder folï