Bob Dylan needs me to be writing about his book like he needs an armadillo in his cornfield: he doesn't, and would hardly notice it only by chance, by looking at one specific spot at a chance time, anyway. Probably wouldn't even know about it. But that's what so much of life comes down to anyway, if you're going to see it, it's because you're really just really looking at what you can see when you can see it, if you've got a smart eye for looking anyway, and so a friend asked me to write about this book that Bob Dylan wrote about himself, and the book, Chronicles, Volume One, is itself what people call a non-linear narrative relating primarily the circumstances of three transitional periods in the artist's vocation. Since Bob Dylan is such an honest writer and I am too, I said that I would write about his book, even if my words about his words don't matter to anyone.

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