Esteemed writers Howard Sounes and Clinton Heylin are currently beefing over their work in documenting the life of the Nobel-winning singer-songwriter, Bob Dylan.
As reported by The Guardian, Heylin has reportedly made comments about Sounes’ Dylan biography from 2001, Down The Highway: The Life of Bob Dylan, which sold 200,000 copies, in his new biography.
The comments by Heylin have been made in his new biography on Dylan, where in his introduction, refers to Sounes as a “professional dirtdigger” and that his 2001 writing is a “semi-literate” book.
And it’s not only those two mentions, according to Sounes, basically the whole introduction is “all about how great Heylin is and then how awful everybody else is who’s written about Bob Dylan…” Sounes also apparently joked that there’s more references on him than Bruce Springsteen in the book.
In a recent interview with The Guardian, Sounes said, “It’s not really polite to tell other writers they’re bad writers, because they tend to fling it back to you. In response, I would say he’s a clunky, self-indulgent writer … his books are all very long and baggy. They’re about his interpretation of Dylan songs… and it’s incredibly boring.”
“He seems to be very upset that, in 2001, I got a lot of publicity because I revealed that Dylan had a secret second marriage, to a woman called Carolyn Dennis, which made headlines all over the world and helped make the book a bestseller.”
Sounes continued, “He just knows how to tell me what the song ‘Visions of Johanna’ means in his mind. Frankly, I don’t care what he thinks ‘Visions of Johanna’ means. I just want to know what Dylan was like.”
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Down The Highway: The Life of Bob Dylan is due for an updated re-release this month ahead of Dylan’s 80th birthday coming up in May.
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