6 Comments

I agree. I was never a big Dylan fan. At first I wasn't wild about Cohen but came to appreciate him later. His songs seem to speak from a very deep place and have a strong nostalgic pull.

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Yet another fascinating and though-provoking article. For me, Leonard Cohem will always reign supreme with the stories his songs telll. Bob Dylan may have won the Nobel Prize for Literature but he doesn’t come close to any of those mentioned in your article!

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Reading this, I was reminded of what big Glenn Miller fans your father and his brother were. And that brought to mind Donald Barthelme saying that he searched for a “cool sound” for his prose à la Glenn Miller’s musical development. And some of DB’s stories are themselves (“How I Write My Songs,” “The King of Jazz”) knowing riffs on popular music.

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Yes indeed, Robert. You have a good memory. Miller reigned supreme when my dad and uncle Conor were young. Conor went on to host a radio show called In the Mood.

Very interesting about Barthelme taking a cue from Miller. I'll have to track down those stories. Eudora Welty wrote a verbal version of a jazz piano concert, Powerhouse.

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Wonderful picture of la vie parisienne! I don't know the song so look forward to listening to it. Merci!

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Maybe because I’m in Paris “The ballad of Lucy Jordan” comes to mind - although I’m far from bored, and not dreaming of riding through Paris in a sports car with the warm wind in my hair, ( but cycling by the Seine on a velib) and there’ll be no seducing a gendarme and certainly no heroin or jumping off the roof! Love Marianne Faithfull’s soulful rendering of this song.

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