beautiful6 It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue – for ‘Leave your stepping stones behind, something calls for you’
7 Desolation Row – for getting its arm round so much, with such a strange mixture of ease and effort
8 All Along the Watchtower – for the economy of its mystery
9 Idiot Wind – for its tender outrage
10 Hurricane – for the accuracy of its anger
11 Man Gave Names to All the Animals – for its jokes
12 O, and (out of order) Visions of Johanna – for all of the above reasons, and more besides
Geoff Dyer’s ‘10 Scholarly Books I Would Like to Write, Using Bob Dylan Lines as Their Titles’
Geoff Dyer is one of the most versatile and least classifiable British writers of his generation. His works include But Beautiful, a book about jazz, several novels and Out of Sheer Rage, in which Dyer records his journey in search of D.H. Lawrence. Yoga for People Who Can’t Be Bothered to Do It, an idiosyncratic collection of writings about his travels in places as diverse as Cambodia and New Orleans, was published in 2003.
1 And Your Mother’s Drugs: Addiction in the Suffragette Movement
2 Fighting in the Captain’s Tower: Eliot, Pound and the Making of ‘The Waste Land’
3 Alive as You or Me: A Life of St Augustine
4 It’s Much Cheaper Down in the South American Town: Globalisation and the Export of Labour
5 Painting the Passports Brown: A History of the American Circus
6 Going Through All These Things Twice: Nietzsche and the Eternal Recurrence
7 Hands in Her Back Pockets: Bette Davis: The Movies and the Myth
8 Who Really Cares?: A History of Obscenity
9 Nearly Any Task: Masculinity and the New Feminism
10 I Shall Be Released: The Bob Dylan Bootleg Industry
Allen Ginsberg’s 11 Greatest Blues Songs
Born in New Jersey in 1926, Allen Ginsberg was educated at Columbia University in New York City, where he met fellow writers Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs, with whom he formed a creative triad that gave birth to the Beat Movement of the 1950s. Ginsberg’s most famous work, Howl and Other Poems, was published in 1955, and its graphic, excoriating vision of the failure of the American Dream resulted in both literary acclaim and obscenity charges. Other books by Ginsberg include Kaddish (1961), Reality Sandwiches (1965), and First Blues: Songs (1982). Allen Ginsberg died in 1997. He contributed this list to The Book of Lists in 1993.
1 ‘James Alley Blues’, Richard ‘Rabbit’ Brown
2 ‘Washington DC Hospital Centre Blues’, Skip James
3 ‘Jelly Bean Blues’, Ma Rainey
4 ‘See See Rider Blues’, Ma Rainey
5 ‘Young Woman’s Blues’, Bessie Smith
6 ‘Poor Me’, Charles Patton
7 ‘Black Girl’, Leadbelly
8 ‘Levee Camp Moan Blues’, Texas Alexander
9 ‘Last Fair Deal Gone Down’, Robert Johnson
10 ‘I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry’, Hank Williams, Sr
11 ‘Idiot Wind’, Bob Dylan
Richard Eyre’s 9 Favourite Theatre Productions
One of the world’s most respected directors for both stage and screen, Richard Eyre has had a long and distinguished career in the British theatre. For nine years he was artistic director of the National Theatre, with overall responsibility for a succession of award-winning productions of shows as different as Guys and Dolls and The Oedipus Trilogy. Richard Eyre, who was knighted in 1997, is also a film director whose 2001 movie Iris, about the novelist Iris Murdoch, was much acclaimed.
At the time I saw these productions I thought that they were inspirational and exemplary – perfect syntheses of writing, acting and design. They were truly theatrical, in the sense of exploiting the theatreness of theatre.
1 WEST SIDE STORY (1959) by William Shakespeare, Arthur Laurents, Stephen Sondheim and Leonard Bernstein; directed by Jerome Robbins Hit me like a thunderbolt – the music, choreography, the energy and the beauty. I had no idea theatre was capable of such things.
2 THE WARS OF THE ROSES (1963) by William Shakespeare; directed by Peter Hall Made me see that Shakespeare could be contemporary and historical, funny and humane, entertaining and educational.
3 CORIOLANUS (1965) by William Shakespeare, adapted by Brecht; directed by Bertolt Brecht and the Berliner Ensemble Brilliantly lucid and distilled – everything to the point and the point was political but not polemical.
4 SAVED (1965) by Edward Bond; directed by Bill Gaskill Like a knife thrust: violent, painful, ascetic, spare – and beautiful.
5 THE CHANGING ROOM (1971) by David Storey; directed by Lindsay Anderson Ensemble detail and harmony: a celebration of beauty, sport, manual labour which now seems as remote as the pre-Raphaelite movement.
6 SUMMERFOLK (1975) by Maxim Gorki; directed by Peter Stein Exquisite, poetic.
7 THE MAHABHARATA (1985) by Anon; directed by Peter Brook The elements of the production were the elements of life – earth, fire, air and water; it had the brilliance and bravura that could have been attention-seeking were it not obviously the consequence of trying to find the most expressive way of telling the story.
8 THE DRAGON’S TRILOGY (1987) written and directed by Robert Lepage A perfect blend of art and architecture, music, dance, light, dialogue and movement; the writing – and the meaning – was in the whole event.
9 FUENTE OVEJUNA (1989) by Lope de Vega; directed by Declan Donellan A sinuous energy, truth and freshness that defined what every production of every classic should aim for.
Ian Rankin’s 7 Great Gigs
Leading exponent of a new sub-genre of crime fiction, dubbed ‘tartan noir’ by some critics, Ian Rankin is one of Scotland’s most successful writers, both critically and commercially. He has published more than a dozen novels set in the parts of Edinburgh the tourists don’t see and featuring the maverick and likeable Inspector Rebus. His fiction has won many awards including, most recently, the Edgar Award for Best Novel presented by the Mystery Writers of America. His latest Rebus novel is Fleshmarket Close (2004).
1 THE SKIDS I was just the right age for punk – 17 in 1977. Of course, growing up in a traditional coal-mining community, it didn’t do to stand out, so we punks tended to congregate
