Starting today, Lawrence J. Epstein will file periodic reports on Bob Dylan. Larry writes about American culture and Jewish life. His most recent books include The Haunted Smile: The Story of Jewish Comedians in America, Mixed Nuts: America’s Love Affair with Comedy Teams, and At the Edge of a Dream: The Story of Jewish Immigrants on New York’s Lower East Side, 1880-1920. Jenny Factor, our West Coast Correspondent, has referred more than once to the last mentioned.
Welcome aboard, LJE! I hope that in one of your posts you will talk about the opening of "Highway 61 Revisited" in relation to the chapter in Genesis that is its source. This re-telling of Abraham's "binding" of Isaac reminds me a little of Wilfred Owen's poem in which the massacred soldiers of World War One are the victims of a bloodthirsy god and an obedient Abraham on Mount Moriah. But Dylan's version is more sardonic and more ambiguous. What do you think?
-- DL
