Bob Dylan replonge avec délices dans le Village de 1961, quand, jeune homme introverti, il découvrait Manhattan. Pour le chanteur folk débutant né dans le Midwest, New York est la ville de tous les possibles, de toutes les passions : nuits blanches enfumées, découvertes littéraires, amours fugaces, amitiés indestructibles. Les souvenirs de l'enfance reviennent ici comme autant d'illuminations, composant l'histoire d'un musicien de génie qui aspirait à la gloire mais ne la supportait pas. Le premier volume d'une autobiographie en roue libre qui devrait comporter trois volets.

“I’d come from a long ways off and had started a long ways down. But now destiny was about to manifest itself. I felt like it was looking right at me and nobody else.” So writes Bob Dylan in Chronicles: Volume One, his remarkable book exploring critical junctures in his life and career. Through Dylan’s eyes and open mind, we see Greenwich Village, circa 1961, when he first arrives in Manhattan. Dylan’s New York is a magical city of possibilities—smoky, nightlong parties; literary awakenings; transient loves and unbreakable friendships. Elegiac observations are punctuated by jabs of memories, penetrating and tough. With the book’s side trips to New Orleans, Woodstock, Minnesota, and points west, Chronicles: Volume One is an intimate and intensely personal recollection of extraordinary times. By turns revealing, poetical, passionate, and witty, Chronicles: Volume One is a mesmerizing window on Bob Dylan’s thoughts and influences. Dylan’s voice is distinctively American: generous of spirit, engaged, fanciful, and rhythmic. Utilizing his unparalleled gifts of storytelling and the exquisite expressiveness that are the hallmarks of his music, Bob Dylan turns Chronicles: Volume One into a poignant reflection on life, and the people and places that helped shape the man and the art.