This was the book the recent Bob Dylan movie, A Complete Unknown, was based on. This is a very rare statement for me: I enjoyed the movie more than the book. There were some chapters that were very interesting and compelling and over all I enjoyed the book. However, there were a lot of redundant descriptions of the various factions within the folk music movement. Over and over again the book went into detail about divides within folk. Two thirds into the book I found these descriptions pedantic.
Whenever Wald stuck with a narrative I found it great reading. I was disappointed to not learn more about Dylan's relationship with Joan Baez or friendships with Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie. I'm assuming other biographies have covered this so maybe that's why Wald focused on the splits within folk, blues, rock etc. I found much of that information interesting. But after awhile it got kind of old.
A decent read over all. Any fan of Dylan will probably want to give it a go. It is well researched and well written. It is almost encyclopedic in its research of the folk movement. Perhaps if my interests aligned in that direction I would have been more invested.
