Wicked messenger

Bob Dylan's abrupt abandonment of overtly political songwriting in the mid-1960s caused an uproar among critics and fans. Marqusee advances the new thesis that Dylan did not drop politics from his songs but changed the manner of his critique to address the changing political and cultural climate and, more importantly, his own evolving aesthetic. Tracing the development of the [1960s] political and cultural dissent movements, Marqusee shows how their twists and turns were anticipated in the poetic aesthetic--anarchic, unaccountable, contradictory, punk--of Dylan's mid-sixties albums, as well…