The Truth about Life, Sung Like a Lie: Dylan’s Timeless Arrows from Consolation Row

Abstract

The world’s greatest (living?) songwriter turned eighty on May 24th, 2021. The University of Tulsa, which houses the Bob Dylan Archive and the Institute of Bob Dylan Studies, celebrated this with a wide-ranging Dylan@80 symposium to take stock of Dylan’s achievements. Consider the near-impossible question I was asked to tackle in the “Tangled up in Dylan” panel: How do you see Dylan from the perspective of a social scientist?