Hollywood Foto-Rhetoric: The Lost Manuscript

by Bob Dylan

Book Overview

Surfacing for the first time after more than forty years,Hollywood Foto-Rhetoricis a remarkable, long-lost manuscript written by Bob Dylan in the 1960s, inspired by renowned photographer Barry Feinstein's portraits of Tinseltown. These twenty-three prose poems are thoughtprovoking, witty, and thoroughly unexpected observations of a bygone era, and through the lens of Feinstein's camera they speak volumes about the faces and places that have graced...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1439112509
• ISBN13: 9781439112502
• Release Date: November 2008
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Length: 141 Pages
• Weight: 2.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 9.4" x 10.2"

Customer Reviews

Opium dream caught on paper

It is difficult to describe this: the pictures and the words combine to a hypnotic effect. It's like a materialized experience of listening to some of the "earlier" songs.

It is poetry (an I, mama, am no genius)

Early 60's photos of Hollywood by Barry Feinstein narrated by Dylan's prose poetry (is it poetry? Don't ask him, as the interviewer did in the too-brief interview in the front of the book). The stark photos show Hollywood dying--Marilyn Monroe, Gary Cooper, The Hal Roach studio, the famous sign--first from a distance, then approaching, then close enough that then I can even see what holds each part of it up an I, mama, am no genius The spare language frames the pictures perfectly with the anger, humor, and Biblical portent of any Dylan lyric, and the words and pictures repay reexamination as the eye rests and then moves between them. I was left wishing for more of the photographs and the text, a true measure of any classic work of art.

awesome

i thought this was one of the coolest things i have ever seen. but it's dylan, enough said!

At Last

I had the pleasure of working for Barry Feinstein in his custom lab in the early 60's and have been waiting for this book ever since. Having previously seen some of these photos and their original meticulous prints, it is a little sad that the publisher did not show the proper respect for Barry's work with their less than careful production. I will, none the less, treasure this book, and recommend it to anyone that enjoys great photography. Barry's work is sometimes subtle, sometimes blunt, but always shares a unique viewpoint. I know I will spend a lot of time with this book. (Dylan doesn't need comment from me.) Jim Dickson

long time comin'

With the photos by Barry Feinstein and the poems by Bob Dylan laid away to age like wine, now is a fine time to crack open this book with a foreward by Luc Sante and an introduction by Billy Collins, of all people. The photos are sometimes raw, sometimes dark, sometimes light, always a delight, and Dylan's poems are, as Billy Collins says in the introduction (that you might almost miss; Collins and Sante don't get a mention anywhere) "marked by unexpected bursts of surrealism, lines that seem pulled out of a hat or caught falling from the sky rather than simply written down." Hollywood Foto-Rhetoric is a coffee table book that you will actually want to sit down with and savor, one you will actually want to read.