Chronicles, Bob Dylan
Chronicles, Bob Dylan
1 Rating(s)
List: $19.99 | Sale: $13.99
Club: $9.99

Chronicles
Volume One

Author: Bob Dylan

Narrator: Sean Penn

Abridged: 5 hr 5 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 10/05/2004


Synopsis

WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE

The celebrated first memoir from arguably the most influential singer-songwriter in the country, Bob Dylan.

“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.”

So writes Bob Dylan in Chronicles: Volume One, his remarkable book exploring critical junctures in his life and career. 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, Chronicles: Volume One is an intimate and intensely personal recollection of extraordinary times.

By turns revealing, poetical, passionate, and witty, Chronicles: Volume One 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 Chronicles: Volume One into a poignant reflection on life, and the people and places that helped shape the man and the art.

About Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan has released thirty-nine studio albums, which collectively have sold over 125 million copies around the world. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature and has been awarded the French Legion of Honor, a Pulitzer Prize Special Citation, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the country’s highest civilian honor. His memoir, Chronicles: Volume One, spent a year on the New York Times bestseller list.

About Sean Penn

Sean Penn won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performances in Mystic River and Milk, and received Academy Award nominations as Best Actor for Dead Man Walking, Sweet and Lowdown, and I Am Sam. He has worked as an actor, writer, producer, and director on over one hundred theater and film productions. His journalism has appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, The Nation, and HuffPo. This is his first novel.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Paul on May 02, 2023

STRANGE BEDFELLOWS, OR, HOW ALEXANDER THEROUX GOT BOB DYLAN HIS FIFTH STAR BACK When I read Chronicles for the first time I was knocked out and gave it five sparkling stars. (My original rave review is way down below.) Then something untoward happened and I came slouching back to Goodreads with an up......more

Goodreads review by Jonathan on November 01, 2016

After being on my “to read” shelf for a while, this book jumped up a couple spots when Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize for literature. He didn’t win the prize because of this autobiography or for his novel, but rather for the lyrics he wrote down and then placed over music. This autobiography is well......more

Goodreads review by Ian on June 11, 2023

Positively Fraud Street? I see you on the street I always act surprised I say, “How do you feel?” But I don’t mean it. "I can't taste your words," You said, "Your songs are just lies." So I cried that you were deaf, And you'd lost sight in your eyes. Then I said that you were wrong When you accused me of the......more

Goodreads review by Lee on October 13, 2016

UPDATE: A good and memorable read but probably not why he won the Nobel. What a wonderful weird book about the influence of cities and sounds, knowing what you want and going for it and getting it thanks to talent, luck, attitude, and meeting the right people. Funny how it emphasizes what no one real......more

Goodreads review by julieta on September 28, 2018

This book is amazing. I have to clear this first: I have never been a Dylan Fan, I have never been able to go past his voice, which is crazy, folkie, and just too rough for me. Call me a softie. But this book is greatness. His memoirs, or, never better described, chronicles, are separated from diffe......more