Elliot's Reading - August 2024

 Elliot's Reading - August 2024

Elliot’s Reading - August 2024

What a great idea for a book!: a joint biography of four whose lives crossed, overlapped, and diverged, a love story, a tragic early death, breake-ups and make-ups, fame and fortune, and of course intimate details about the daily life of the world’s greatest living artist, too wit, David Hajdu’s (2001) Positively 4th Street: The Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Farina, and Richard Farina. These 4 writers/artists / musicians whose lives interlinked and lento some of the most beautiful and innovative music (Dylan, creator of dozens of monumental woks), beautiful and socially committed art (JB), somewhat prominent career overshadowed by famous sister and dominant husband (Mimi B.), and the musician novelist of great promise who died on the day of publication of his only novel (Farina). It seems like a bold and nearly impossible project, but DH makes it work, balancing the 4 lives and focusing on each through childhood, early career, difficult marriages, early death - with particularly good information on time the foursome or some thereof spent together, in love, friendship, and rivalry. DH’s research is comprehensive and clear and well-documented in the appendix, and altogether it’s a seminal work of music and cultural scholarship and a great read for fans  of any or all of the 4,