Sean Wilentz has written books on Andrew Jackson and Ronald Reagan. He received a Bancroft Prize for his work “The Rise of American Democracy: From Jefferson to Lincoln” and is a contributing editor to the New Republic. He’s taught at Princeton since 1979 and has contributed to publications across the country.
With writings addressing such weighty topics as the American presidency and the state of the republic on his resume, where does a book about an aging American singer-songwriter fit into the mix?
“Come on, is the Tea Party really heavier than Bob Dylan?” Wilentz said, laughing, during a recent phone interview. “I think Bob Dylan is much heavier than the Tea Party. People take politics too seriously. They should take art more seriously, I think.”
“Bob Dylan in America,” Wilentz’s new book tackling Dylan’s life, music and American culture, was published last month. The author will talk about his work on Saturday during the Jewish Literary Festival at the Jewish Community Center.
“Writing about music is obviously different than writing about laws and campaigns and White House intrigue and so forth,” Wilentz said. “But historians ask the same kind of questions about things that have happened or are happening no matter what the subject is.
“I like to have the past and the recent speak to each other,” Wilentz continued. “History that isn’t alive and helping us understand ourselves is kind of pedantic and dead up to a point. It has to be some sort of living connection.”
Wilentz’s living connection to Dylan goes beyond that of baby boomer fandom. He grew up in New York City and his family owned a bookstore in Greenwich Village during the cross section of the established Beat culture and the emerging folk scene.
The title “Dylan in America” is a homage to the works “Dylan Thomas in American” and “Allen Ginsberg in America.” Trying to avoid a too-textbook-sounding title, Wilentz attempted to convey a sense of Dylan’s influence on America and America’s influence on Dylan.
“I think he’s the greatest songwriter the country has known the last 50 years,” Wilentz said. “He has grown, he has evolved. But above all else, I try to show in the book he has a way of connecting to many different aspects of American cultural life, both musical and literary, and bring them to bear and to combine them and to make them his own. That is really his genius.”
