Stevie Forbert’s “It Isn’t Gonna Be That Way” is an almost completely forgotten and heart-rending folk-rock masterpiece. Give it a listen, then come back if you can.
Dylan and I stumbled down the middle aisle as Bob Dylan took the stage. Standing about twenty-five yards from us, the skinny minstrel gripped the microphone, his penetrating eyes peering straight ahead, seeming to stare straight through me. Part of me was already beginning to write the story, while another part wondered whether I was worthy of this encounter. The first part immediately answered the second: “Only if what you write about it proves you worthy.”
Review of Milton In America by Peter Ackroyd. In 1660, John Milton was both the poet of “Lycidas,'' “L'Allegro,” and “Il Penseroso” and the well-known Protestant author of controversial tracts condemning the royal government of England and defending the beheading of Charles I… Novelist Peter Ackroyd chooses this moment in Milton's life to set his new novel. We find the blind writer skulking through English backroads in a covered wagon. A young rapscallion, who becomes his guide through the visible world and his amanuensis, hops in. (Originally published in The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Sunday, July 13, 1997. Click here or on title.)
