University of Virginia Library

III

Freshman year. The
University of Minnesota. He
pledged Sigma Alpha Mu. Bob
Dylan! A Sammy!?...Holy...!
Yes, well only a pledge, though
he lived in the house part of
that first year, before he
dropped out, and into
Dinkytown and The Street.

On the Second Trip,
Thompson met Ellen Baker,
who knew Dylan during what
she calls the "bohemian" days.
She drove stock cars then, and
Dylan — well, Dylan had his
guitar, and he was travelling,
setting up connections, and
getting ready for New York.

Dylan, himself, said later:
"My past is so complicated you
wouldn't believe it even if I
told you." But what develops
in the second half is the

humanization of a demigod. It
occurs that a chief danger for
folk heroes is in having their
pasts discovered, smudged with
the dull, commonplace,
everyday marks of camp
realism, or pure kitsch.

Mrs. Zimmerman likes Toby
too. She is at once suspicious
and trusting. If she is a
protective Jewish momma,
who works in a department
store, who drives the Cadillac
and takes the winters in Miami,
then she is no Portnoy's
momma, thank God. There's
something earthy, like love, in
Mrs. Z. And it gets across,
without sounding like a
patronizing pimp.

Bobby took care of Mother,
and before, had helped his
father in the family store: the
bad times were when they
would go out to repossess
someone's furniture, some
laid-off miner, on the margin,
and a family running on credit
and God's Will. And we are to
imagine an emerging sense of
outrage at the affront, the very
absurdity of bitter poverty in
the midst of great riches.

We are to follow Thompson
on what increasingly becomes
his own search for a personal
goal, a part of his own identity,
as much as for a glimpse of the
early Dylan. Trip Two takes up
with the writer contemplating
Ernest Hemingway's home in
Oak Park, Illinois. Somehow,
this jars loose the confession
that Toby "always wanted to
publish something about
Dylan," a fact which needs no
expression besides the book
itself.

The pre-pub copy says "Mr.
Thompson would like to be a
musician when he grows up."
And Mr. Thompson himself
tosses our way the following
scrap of local memorabilia:

"And the Charlottesville
scene (c. 1963) at Paul
Clayton's cabin...with Bob
apparently really getting into
riding bikes around town, up
and down the campus, blowing
the blue Brooks Brothers
button-down set's minds;

"UVA! and the evening
drinking at the Gaslight but
not much 'cause John Tuck,
the Gaslight's owner, never got
along with Paul very well, but
there had been good music
there, what with Caroline
Hester, Dick Farina, Joanie
(Baez) and god knows who else
from the city (D.C.) dropping
down." Those were folk days.