Bob Dylan's new book to release in November

At almost 81, Bob Dylan continues to surprise his fans worldwide through his multifaceted creativity and intense dedication to music, song as poetry, and painting. The Bob Dylan team made an unexpected announcement on Women’s International Day that sounded like a gift.

For years, Dylan fans have been waiting for Chronicles Volume Two, an official sequel to his memoir, Chronicles Volume One, which came out in 2004 and remained on the New York Times bestselling lists for over 50 weeks. The book also had detailed his struggle with celebrity. But, no, at the moment, all is quiet on the front of that literary genre.

The news is that Mr. Dylan’s artistry is offering a novelty that has nothing to do with an autobiography. The unanticipated new writing, his first book in 18 years, is titled The Philosophy of Modern Song. It will feature Bob Dylan’s unique reflection on the ideas and philosophy behind modern songs.

On International Women's Day, the publisher Simon & Schuster announced the publication is coming out in the fall in the US, on November 8.

Energy is in the air for the great, dynamic American singer-songwriter who was awarded the 2016 Nobel Prize for Literature “for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition,” as stated by the Swedish Academy.

These days an indefatigable Bob is on the road, busy with concerts - the second leg of his Rough and Rowdy Ways tour that takes him through the American South. And while a major retrospective of his visual art is on view now through April 22 at the Frost Art Museum in Miami, the Bob Dylan Center, an innovative museum and archive of his work, is set to open in Tulsa, Oklahoma on May 10.

Bob Dylan’s spokesman Larry Jenkins said that Mr. Dylan began writing The Philosophy of Modern Song in 2010. “The book offers a master class on the art and craft of songwriting. He writes over 60 essays focusing on songs by other artists, spanning from Stephen Foster, the father of American music to Elvis Costello, and in between ranging from Hank Williams to Nina Simone. He analyses what he calls the trap of easy rhymes, breaks down how the addition of a single syllable can diminish a song, and even explains how bluegrass relates to heavy metal,” said Jenkins.

Fans and scholars find Dylan’s unique prose mercurial, profound, poignant, and often laugh-out-loud funny. The Bob Dylan team also said that the essays not only are ostensibly about music, “they are meditations and reflections on the human condition.”

In addition, the new book will feature “150 carefully curated photos as well as a series of dream-like riffs that, taken together, resemble an epic poem and add to the work’s transcendence”.

Despite a brilliant career that is “more of a calling,” as he once said, and an impressive list of plaudits - A Pulitzer Prize, The French Legion of Honor, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom - Dylan remains humble when discussing his colleagues whether it be influences, collaborators or general admiration. He pays tribute to the legends of music that came before him.

The master of rhyming and Symbolism lyrics who released thirty-nine studio albums that sold over 125 million copies has a deep and comprehensive knowledge of American popular music. Bob knows a lot about songs because he is “a song and dance man.”