Leah Greenblatt at the NYT:
On one of her signature songs, the restless, almost phosphorescent 1976 anthem “Hejira,” Joni Mitchell sits in some cafe, sketching out a life philosophy: “We all come and go unknown/Each so deep and superficial/Between the forceps and the stone.” She sounds majestic but weary, like an eagle or an off-duty Valkyrie. Who are we flightless birds to disagree?
And yet: Such is the enduring lure of Joni-ology, the secular religion of her fandom, that two new meditations on Mitchell have already landed in this youngish year, just over a month apart. Henry Alford’s “I Dream of Joni” and Paul Lisicky’s “Song So Wild and Blue” are not really traditional works of scholarship or biography; footnotes are wielded gently. Instead, Mitchell mostly serves as a mirror and a muse, a blond godhead on which to pin the authors’ respective forms and fascinations.
With a title as pun-perfect as “I Dream of Joni,” you almost can’t blame Alford, the puckish longtime New Yorker writer and humorist, for writing an entire book to justify it.
more here.
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