Justin Taylor at Bookforum:
The Bob Dylan Archive had long been a subject of rumor and legend. Few outside the singer’s inner circle knew for sure whether it existed, let alone what it contained. It was kind of hard to picture Mr. Dont Look Back himself boxing up old notebooks for posterity. But if he didn’t, someone did. When the sale was announced in March 2016, the New York Times described it as “deeper and more vast than even most Dylan experts could imagine, promising untold insight into the songwriter’s work. . . . A private trove of his work, dating back to his earliest days as an artist, including lyrics, correspondence, recordings, films and photographs.”
Steadman Upham, then the president of the University of Tulsa, promised that “we will be set up for serious scholars and for people who have a record of being Dylanologists.” Upham died in 2017, and GKFF has since bought out the university’s stake in the Archive, but the promise of access has been kept. Two early hires were the curator Michael Chaiken (who has worked on the archives of Norman Mailer, Nicholas Ray, and D. A. Pennebaker), and the poet/biographer/Dylan-freak Robert Polito. Though it would be years before the Center would open its doors, Chaiken and Polito began bringing writers to Tulsa.
more here.
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