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NEW YORK (AP) � Bob Dylan, the unofficial poet laureate of
the rock 'n' roll generation, has now been officially placed alongside such
literary greats as Philip Roth and Adrienne Rich, not to mention biographies of
Shakespeare and Willem de Kooning. All were among nominees announced Saturday
for the National Book Critics Circle prizes.
Dylan, whose memoir Chronicles, Vol. 1 was a favorite with both reviewers and readers, is among the finalists for biography/autobiography, his competition including two acclaimed best sellers: Ron Chernow's biography of Alexander Hamilton and Stephen Greenblatt's biography of Shakespeare, Will in the World. Also nominated were John Guy's Queen of Scots: The True Life of Mary Stuart" and "De Kooning: An American Master," by Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan. Virtually all literary efforts by rock stars, from the Kinks' Ray Davies to Smashing Pumpkins' Billy Corgan, are laughed off by critics, but Dylan has been praised for an unusually rich and engaging book, writing passionately about such influences as Woody Guthrie and Robert Johnson and recalling his years as a young singer-songwriter in Greenwich Village. Dylan, who more than anyone inspired rock 'n' rollers to think of themselves as poets, recounts his often mysterious past in an offhand, nonlinear style, from reading Civil War-era newspapers in the New York Public Library to sharing a hamburger backstage with Tiny Tim. "Who can possibly compete with Bob Dylan?" fellow finalist Ron Chernow said with a laugh. "But the reviews have been so uniformly interesting I'm not surprised." "I'm of Dylan's generation, so it's a thrill for me," said nonfiction nominee Stephen Greenblatt, a leading Shakespeare scholar who at age 61 is two years younger than Dylan. "I had never thought I would be competing for an award with him." Critics are known for championing the obscure, but this year's list was filled with prominent names and titles, especially compared with last fall's National Book Awards, a supposedly more glamorous affair. Roth, whose omission from the finalists for the National Book Awards was widely criticized, was cited by the NBCC for The Plot Against America, his dsytopian novel of the United States under the presidency of Charles Lindbergh. Fellow fiction nominees include another prominent book bypassed for the National Book Award, Marilynne Robinson's Gilead; Edwidge Danticat's The Dew Breaker and two British releases, Alan Hollinghurst's Booker Prize-winning The Line of Beauty and David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas, a Booker finalist.. ||
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