Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
Our guest is Oliver Trager, author of Keys to the Rain: The Definitive 
Bob Dylan Encyclopedia.

Since graduating from Bennington College in 1982, Oliver Trager has 
worked as a writer and editor in his hometown, New York City.

Mr. Trager is the author of Dig Infinity!: The Life and Art of Lord 
Buckley (Welcome Rain Publishers, 2002), a biography of a neglected 
comedian. In 1999, Trager co-authored The Return of the Hip Messiah, 
a play about Buckley that premiered and enjoyed a short but successful 
run at Chicago’s famed Second City theater. Over the past decade, he 
has produced several evenings devoted to Buckley’s unique monologues..
     
Trager is also the author of The American Book Of The Dead: The Definitive 
Grateful Dead Encyclopedia (Simon & Schuster/Fireside, 1997) and Keys to 
the Rain: The Definitive Bob Dylan Encyclopedia (Billboard Books, 2004).
     
Since 1985 Trager has been employed at Facts On File News Services as 
managing editor of Editorials On File, a journal that objectively surveys 
daily newspaper opinion of major news events. His position at Facts On 
File has also resulted in the editing of some twenty books focusing on 
a specific topic of political or social importance. Some titles include: 
America in Space, America’s Children, The Iran-Contra Scandal, Crime in 
America, Sexual Politics in America, Abortion: The Continuing Controversy, 
Gorbachev’s Glasnost, The Arts & Media in America, America’s Minorities & 
he Multicultural Debate, Our Poisoned Planet, Sports in America, and Poverty 
in America.
     
In 1991 he co-conceived, directed and produced Gulf Bowl, an internationally 
broadcast video collage commentary on network television’s coverage of the 
Persian Gulf Crisis. Gulf Bowl was included and shown at the 1993 Whitney 
Museum Biennial in New York City.
     
In 2003 Trager wrote the voice-over narrative for Toronto filmmaker Ron 
Mann’s Mighty Dark to Travel: A Tribute to Bill Monroe and is working 
with Mr. Mann on Rat Fink, a documentary film about Ed “Big Daddy” Roth 
king of the custom cars designers of the 1950s and 1960s.
     
Previously he has been co-publisher of Apocalypso, written on a freelance 
basis for Entertainment Weekly and has had his poetry published in The 
Minneapolis Review of Baseball and Elysian Fields Quarterly.
     
Trager lives in Brooklyn, New York with his wife Elaine Beery, an interior 
designer, and twelve-year-old son, a scholar/athlete with a yen for the 
Classics and a nasty sinker.


Our interviewer is Howard Levine.   

Howard Levine is a New York soul who trained as a clinical pharmacologist.   
After teaching medical and pharmacy students for 8 years, he has worked 
developing new drugs for the last 17 years.  His primary passion, after his 
wife, Audrey and their children, is music.  He has followed music avidly 
since the late-1960’s and remains firmly rooted in the music and musicians 
from that era.  Along with music Howard continues to play out one of his 
favorite fantasies, centering for an ice hockey team on a weekly basis.  
  

    
 Welcome Oliver, so good to have you here with us.  We have something in
common in our professions - both being researchers.  In my line I am looking
for an answer that often hasn't been put together by other.  It appears to
me that you may be doing the same thing with your Dylan work.  Could you
tell us what turned you on to putting your encyclopedia on your to do list?
  

    
Greetings.
Howard, you flatter me. Where your research can result in actually
helping people's lives, I think the best I can hope for is an "ah-ha"
or the lightbulb firing on above my reader's head for a moment.

Yes, in my critical analysis of Dylan's material (critiques that I
hope don't seem set in stone), I am trying to lead the reader to at
least some sort of mild epiphany. Deciphering Dylan's lyrics is
particularly dangerous work and I always try to steer clear of dogma,
presenting my take as merely "a" not "the" way to go about feeling more
comfortable with  whatever it is he may be expressing in a given song.

But, the critical, element of the book (as you have no doubt noticed,
comprises a portion of what I attempt to bring to each entry. There is,
for starters, much biogphical and historical material related to both
Dylan's songs and those he covered on record and in performance.

As for why I put writing such and encyclopedia on my to-do list? Asky
my shrink! Insanity I suppose.

No, seriously. I guess I felt that with a world full of umpteen Dylan
bios and scholarly literary style exgesis already out floating in the
ether, there was a need a good reference book that could quickly aid
both the harder-core Dylanites and newbies looking to get their feet
wetter.

Also, my own curiosity comes into play as well. I've long had an
interest not only in analysis of Dylan's songs but in their
historical/musicological folk roots. Who was the real "Stagger Lee" or
"Black Jack Davy"? What is the story with "Like A Rolling Stone,"
"Positively 4th Street" or, for that matter, "Wild Mountain Thyme."

Figured others had the same curisoity but didn't necessarily want to
go through the trouble of tracking it down. So I did it for them. On
level I've been doing this work and having these conversations with
others and myself since I was a kind. And, as a follow-up to my
Grateful dead book and on-going connection to Lord Buckley, the
encyclopedia format seemed  a natural.
  

    
How long did it take you to write the book.  I was continually amazed as I
read thorugh it (and I read every entry) as to how much information you came
up with!
  

    
(Note: offsite readers who have questions or comments can email them to
<inkwell-hosts@well.com> to have them added to the conversation here)
  

    
A very impressive book. Full of insights and interesting facts. As I was 
reading it, I too was wondering how long it took for you to put it 
together.
  

    
I really got start counting at about 1995 when I started in on the
Dead as my approach and methodology really segued from one project to
the next. So that would be like what? Eight, nine years. Yikes!

And I'm amazed that anyone actually read every entry. Which ones stood
out either in a positive, informative way or came off as lacking?
  

    
hey, I'm a compulsive character!

the book is at home, let me go take a look, but I didn't really find
anything lacking.....i've read many Dylan books, subscribe to ISIS (have
since 1993 or so), yet I found myself just absorbed in the book.
  

    
Are we only suppose to talk about the Dylan book here, or can you talk
about your work with Facts on File?
  

    

Feel free to ask, Sharon, and Oliver can decide to answer as he sees fit.

My question: Does the phrase "Keys to the Rain" occur anywhere in the Dylan
canon?  I know the phrase as the title of a Robert Hunter song.
  

    
 The title bring Hard Rain to my mind.
  

    
Good, surprisingly infrequently asked question.
The title is drawn from "Visions of Johanna" which contains the lyric
"the harmonicas play the skeleton keys and the rain/And these visions
of Johanna are now all that remain." Okay, so it wasn't exact but I
felt it evoked Dylan's mystery while describing what the book was in
poetic/utilitarian way. An encyclopedia is like a key and rain is one
of the more potent and frequently occuring word/symbols in the Dylan
canon. The Dylanesque Hunter song "Keys to the Rain" played in there
too, natch.  And is there a better Dylan song than "Visions of
Johanna"? -- gotta be tied for first with a few others. Other title
ideas I contemplated: "Back Pages" and "Odds and Ends." Any other after
the fact title suggestions?
  

    
Sharon: feel free to ask me about anything whether it be on my bio or
not. Facts on File is certainly open for discussion. Are you familiar
with our company?
  

    
No, not very, though seems to me I have a book by that title on my
reference shelf. It sounds like an interesting place to work. How'd you
end up there? How are they funded? etc.
  

    

Hi Oliver!

I wonder whether you have considered A.J. Weberman's concordance of Bob Dylan's 
lyrics mapped to AJW's very strange interpretations.  Rain, in his view, maps
to heroin, if I recall correctly.  Of course he believes that all of Bob Dylan's
songs point essentially to Bob Dylan's ongoing habitual use of heroin (this is
Weberman's theory).  Recently, he sent an e-mail to bobdylan.com in which he
demonstrated that Bruce Springsteen's new song "Devils & Dust" is actually not,
as Bruce has said, inspired by a soldier in Iraq, but is rather a coded attempt
by Bruce Springsteen to take Bob Dylan to task for various malfeasances.
  

    
Hi Dan,
Long time, no see. How's it been?

AJ Weberman. Should I be surprised that his name popped up so quickly?
Amazingly, I don't have a copy of AJ's conconrdence which is probably
a good thing. Met the fellow recently and was taken aback by his
general humble demeanor. Not what I was expecting. Look, he is
essentially the type of dogmatist I tried really hard not be. The
beauty and genius of Dylan's best is that a word like "rain" can be
interpreted intellectually and/or emotionally depending on each and
every listener and the particular set and setting they encounter the
poetry. Another thought I had with the use of the word "rain" in the
title was that it could be heard as "reign." That would put quite
another spin on it, no? AJ's obsession aside, the world is probably a
richer place because of him. His book "Coup d'Etat America" (I think
that's the title) is landmark in JFK assassination stuff. And he
invented "garbology"--though it would have been nice of him to pick
another test subject.

Sharon: re: Facts On File. When I first started there back in the
mid-1980s, there was one big company called Facts On File. It was
divided into two groups: the reference cadre which publishes
subscription-based periodicals and a book group. Both were players in
the library market. Still are. At some point, my half was sold and
re-sold so that we are now two separate companies with more or less the
same name. And we no longer share office space. Don't know where they
are in NYC. Where I work, Facts On File News Services, is a part of the
Weekly Reader Corporation that publishes the Weekley Reader, the World
Almanac and a bunch of other stuff. Check out www.facts.com for more.
  

    
Oliver, one of the entries I really dug into was The Lonesome Death Of
Hattie Carroll.  It explained much of the song to me.

Have any of your critics compalined about all of the Grateful Dead/Jerry
Garcia references in the book?
  

    
I wrote an essay in college about Dylan's use of the word rain. I
concluded he usually meant it to mean memory. I rarely conduct such
intellectual inquiries these days, preferring instead to just listen
and let lyrics wash over me and have whatever effect they will. And I
have no idea whether I was right -- but I got an A on the paper.

My question: why no biographical entries, etc.? I understand wanting
to avoid making the thing just too unwieldy, which could easily happen
with Dylan ("Johnson, Lyndon Baines"; "Rimbaud, Arthur"; "Peckinpah;
Sam"; "Daniels, Charlie"; "Christ, Jesus" etc. etc. etc.) but did you
consider including people very close to the Dylan story, such as Sarah
Lowndes or Albert Grossman (or, for that matter, Rimbaud?)

This isn't a criticism -- just curious about your thinking.
  

    
"Hattie Carroll" was among my favorite entries to write, combining
semi-forgotten US history, lyric analysis and a cogent overview of the
changes Dylan has put the song through. What a song. Too bad has kept
it in pretty lightr rotation over the years. Scholar/critic Christoper
Ricks swears by the original release as if it was chiseled in stone.
Me, I go for the Rolling Thunder versions but have heard some good
mid-'90s version. Seems like Bob saves it for when he hits the DC area.

Yeah, there are probably too many Grateful Dead references in the
book. An occupational hazzard of being a Deadhead a guess.

Glad you got an "A" Dan. What college was that? I'm a bit confused by
your question re: biographical entries. There are, actually, tons of
biographical entries, Sara included (see "Sara"). The real problem is
that there is no index for easier access. That lacking, to be
diplomatic, was the oversight of my publisher who was a wee bit too
anxious to get the book to the printer. That is my main criticism with
the book. An index woulda made it so much more user-friendly.

Re: Grossman, Rimbaud, entries. I wrtoe but had to cut these and other
entries (John Hammond, Leadbelly, Robert Johnson, Bobby Neuwirth, the
Band, Baez, Never Ending Tour musicians) for reasons of space.
  

    

Man, I hate that "cutting for space" bullshit.  I had to cut a small but
extremely significant piece of the source listings (to wit: the list of
interview I did myself, which was substantial) from the back of "Playing in
the Band" to save $12 in printing costs.  And there was one reviewer who
slammed the book for its lack of original source materials.  Ratfuckers.

Okay, I just made up the $12 figure, but jeez.  This seems like a textbook
example of why the bean counters shouldn't be able to overrule the authors
and editors.
  

    
Publishers seem to go into these situations already believing they're
going to lose money, so why bother to do things that would make the
book useful and, thus, help it to sell. 
  

    
They also seem to have their price point and manufacturing costs figured out
and then shave the book accordingly.  More evidence that the industry is run
by marketing people.
  

    
In all fairness to Billboard, the book was way over the page count and
many of the shavings I made did improve the final product. They also
showed a degree of patience for a writer careening towards a deadline.
But the lack of index is still a killer. I had a decent one
half-prepared already. I do indexing as part of my job at Facts On File
anyway and its something I really care about, as square and nerdy as
that may sound. I mean, I often dis a book because of its missing or
lame index. Irony rules once again.

And a special hello to Berliner. Your "Fresh Air" music reviews are
still killer. 
  

    
(Ed doesn't do music reviews; he does 'rock history' pieces.  But yeah,
they're great!)
  

    
I am curious to know if FoF subjected the book to any kind of serious fact-
checking. This is not to suggest that there are problems with the Dylan
book, but at least on of their other "reference" books (the one on radio) is
full of errors.
  

    
I don't have the book handy, and will have to check it out later re:
biographical entries. Sadly, I have had limited time to enjoy it (but I
really like what I've seen so far.) I tried finding a couple of
people, though, and they weren't there. I tried Sara under "Dylan" and
"Lowndes." (partly, I admit, in hopes of there being a new cheesecake
shot of her). And in my quick thumbings-through, I didn't see any such
entries for anyone else. Will look again, obviously.