a complete unknown…

Moira and I went along to the Watershed yesterday to see James Mangold’s ‘A Complete Unknown’ – about Bob Dylan’s rise to become one of the most iconic singer-songwriters in history. The 19-year-old from Minnesota arrives in New York in 1961 with his guitar and is destined to change the course of American music.
I recall my schoolboy days in 1962 when, in order to try to look ‘cool’ and ‘keep up with the music scene’ (I’m pretty sure I was the first person to actually discover The Beatles!), I used to subscribe to ‘Disc’ magazine or what later became ‘Disc Weekly’… and so began my fascination with Mr Dylan and his music. “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan” 1963 album has always been my favourite.
As my good friend Tony suggested (after he’d seen the film last weekend), watching it was an exercise in ‘nostalgia’… in a very positive way. He was absolutely right. Unsurprisingly (on a Tuesday afternoon!), the vast majority of the pretty much capacity audience comprised lots of old couples in their 70s (like us!) – reliving their youth.
I feared that it would all be very disappointing… a number of people acting out and singing parts of some of my heroes. Well, I couldn’t have been more wrong. I thought the actors were absolutely excellent: Dylan (played brilliantly by Timothée Chalamet); Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro); Pete Seeger (Edward Norton); and girlfriend Sylvie Russo (pictured on the ‘Freewheelin’ album cover photograph)(Elle Fanning).
In the film, Dylan somewhat predictably (and convincingly) comes across as an arrogant, thick-skinned, selfish musical genius. The film includes the time of Dylan’s appearance at the 1965 Newport folk festival – where he rejects the traditional folk traditions in favour of rock and blues-inspired electric guitars… and I can well remember my own disappointment/disbelief of that time. But, hey, music is something of a journey – and Dylan is still going strong despite his 83 years (and thank goodness for that).
I’d strongly recommend that you see this film. It brought back lots of memories.
PS: Of course, I’ve been re-listening to Dylan albums all over again since seeing the film!
PPS: I think my favourite Dylan song is “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall”… and its lyrics are featured in Mark Edwards+Lloyd Timberlake’s brilliant book “Hard Rain: Our Headlong Collision With Nature” (published in 2006)… a stunning photographic essay. I absolutely treasure this book. It’s sadly sobering that the book’s major theme – our headlong collision with nature and the pressing issues of climate change, environmental degradation and world poverty – applies even more today than it did then, 19 years ago… and Dylan’s lyrics (which at the time were inspired by the threat of nuclear meltdown) remain scarily prophetic – 62 years later. 

january 2025 books…

The Fortnight In September (RC Sherriff): This is our next Bloke’s book. First published in 1931, it’s a simple account of a family’s two weeks’ holiday at the seaside. The Stevens’ family (mother and father; Mary nearly 20; Dick 17; and Ernie 10), who lived near Dulwich, had always holidayed in Bognor and always stayed at the same guest house. They were an ‘ordinary’, decent family and their holidays were planned by the father (who, every year, made a list of ‘Marching Orders’ to ensure that everything was ‘right’ in advance of their train journey to the coast)(we travelled by Sandwell Coaches’ charabancs), but with the family agreeing a basic itinerary on a day-to-day basis. Although there was something like a 25-year time difference, the book reminded me of our own family holidays in Blackpool each year as a child. My Dad was a list-maker (Ru and I have inherited the trait!) and, like the Stevenses, our holidays included beach cricket games (or to the park when the tide was in), theatre visits, the pier and amusement arcades… and we stayed at the same guest house every year – even after the people had retired. Nothing really happens in this book, except the simple pleasures and the decent ordinariness of (working class) life. The book won’t appeal to many perhaps, but I found it a wonderfully evocative reminder of life as it used to be.
The Last Devil To Die (Richard Osman): I’ve read and really enjoyed Osman’s previous three ‘Thursday Murder Club’ novels. There’s part of me that almost resents Osman’s ridiculous success in everything he seems to touch (but, hey, he’s a hugely talented bloke!) but, I have to admit, I really like his books! If anything, I think this is probably his ‘best yet’. Another clever, intricate storyline – featuring art forgers, online fraudsters, drug dealer and, of course, those wonderful, aged characters (Joyce, Elizabeth, Ibrahim and Ron – my favourite is Joyce!) from Cooper’s Chase Retirement Village. Effortlessly (at least that’s how it seems) entertaining and even quite moving (despite the body-count!). I read it within 3 days and found it rather wonderful.
Julia (Sandra Newman): This novel (published in 2023) is something of a re-telling of Orwell’s ‘1984’ (which I’d previously read three times before over the past 50 or so years - the last in 2017)… but, this time, from the very different perspective of the role women were forced to play – something that was clearly lacking in Orwell’s novel. Newman’s version is seen through the eyes of Julia Worthing, who works in the Fiction Department at the Ministry of Truth. I found it utterly convincing, complex and disturbing… and, somewhat worryingly (in my view), also a reflection of the world we currently live in – with its powerful (+hugely rich) oligarchs; its fake news; its blatant lies; and its potential ability to control the media/internet (but, so far, no apparent use of torture!?). It all felt scarily authentic and impressively written. Not a book that one ‘enjoys’ exactly… but it’s very difficult not to be hugely impressed.
Cork In The Doghouse (Macdonald Hastings): Another book from the Oxfam secondhand bookshop – largely on the basis that it was another of Penguin Books’ ‘green cover crime series’. It was first published in 1957 (I remember the author when he was a reporter for the BBC’s ‘Tonight’ programme back in the day!) but, frankly, I was very disappointed – it all felt very contrived and (perhaps unsurprisingly) very dated… and yet it probably would have been better to have been set back in the 1920s. Montague Cork is the General Manager+Managing-Director of the Anchor Accident Insurance Company (the author has apparently written a whole series of ‘Cork Adventures’… I personally won’t be reading any others!) and this one concerns a highly-insured pit bull terrier and a group of ne’er-do-wells. I’m afraid I found the book unremarkable and unconvincing.
Three Men In A Boat (Jerome K Jerome): I think this is the fourth time I’ve read this book (the last being in 2020)… somewhat pitifully perhaps, I took it off the bookshelf again on the basis that it provided some guaranteed ‘comfort reading’ at a time when the world seems to have lost its marbles. First published in 1889 (our/Moira’s copy 1969) is the well-known story of three men (and a dog) on a boat, making the journey from Kingston to Oxford along the Thames (and back again). It’s obviously incredibly dated and ‘of its time’, but it really is very funny and beautifully written. All accounts of their journey invariably get side-tracked by recollections of other, often completely unrelated, events – indeed, the first quarter of the book isn’t about things they encountered on their boat journey at all (instead: stories about their various health issues; what they should take with them; how they should pack etc). Some lovely references bemoaning the “pace of nineteenth century life”… and a rather pertinent comment about “people’s changing tastes” and things that had become “unfashionable”: “Will it be the same in the future? Will the prized treasures of today always be the cheap trifles of the day before? Will rows of our willow-pattern dinner-plates be ranged above the chimney-pieces of the great in the years 2000 and odd?...”. A lovely, enjoyable re-read.