Get Discount 10% Off
Subscribe to our newsletters now and stay up-to-date with new arrivals, updates and deals.
MILLIONS OF TITLES TO CHOOSE FROM
Currency
After the Flood: Inside Bob Dylan's Memory Palace
A familiar narrative goes: Bob Dylan, the voice of sixties counterculture, disappeared in the 1970s, then released...
- $50.50 USD
$95.99 USD- $50.50 USD
- Unit price
- per
Please hurry! Only 939 left in stock
Couldn't load pickup availability
A familiar narrative goes: Bob Dylan, the voice of sixties counterculture, disappeared in the 1970s, then released arguably the worst music of his career in the 1980s--only to be resurrected in 2016, when he was controversially awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Dylan's concerts once began with an announcer intoning a deadpan version of just such a narrative.
That is not this story.
Here, instead, is Dylan's second thirty years. Across an abecedarium of chapters surveying his albums, performances, films, and books since 1991--since that rainy February night in New York City when Dylan, then forty-nine, accepted a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, signaling in effect that his extraordinary vocation as a vital and indispensable creative force had ended, was over--After the Flood reveals Dylan's creative output during the last three decades as his most ambitious and accomplished yet.
Drawing on thousands of pages from Dylan's newly opened archive in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and anatomizing hundreds of published and unpublished lyrics, liner notes, and more, celebrated poet and biographer Robert Polito demonstrates how Dylan evolved a late musical style that has equally embodied and resisted its era, interweaving folk process and American and world history, and transforming spectral cultural memory into devastating inspiration. Polito thus establishes Dylan as an intensely literary songwriter whose recent writings, especially, are dynamic, intricate, and far-reaching collages.
Between Good as I Been to You (1992) and Shadow Kingdom (2023), across Desert Storm, 9/11, and COVID-19, Polito shows that Dylan revitalized lines and contexts from sources as diverse as classical Greece and Rome, the American Civil War, and film noir, tipping Henry Timrod, poet laureate of the Confederacy, into Muddy Waters; slanting Herman Melville, John Winthrop, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow into Stephen Foster, Dan Emmett, and Al Jolson; and secreting Marcel Proust into his own literal California backyard--to touch on just a few of the storerooms inside Dylan's astonishing "memory palace."
Imaginatively researched, boldly arranged, and with elegiac insights into the cunning behind his songs, After the Flood is an essential revision and continuation of the Dylan saga, and a must-read for all Dylan enthusiasts.
Author: Robert Polito
Publisher: Liveright Publishing Corporation
Published: 01/27/2026
Pages: 384
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.38lbs
Size: 9.24h x 6.36w x 1.12d
ISBN: 9780871402936
Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 10/13/2025
Kirkus Reviews 11/15/2025
About the Author
Polito, Robert: - Robert Polito served as president of the Poetry Foundation from 2013 to 2015. The founding director of the Graduate Writing and Writing and Democracy Programs at the New School, Polito teaches writing and literature. For his book Savage Art, he was awarded the NBCC Award in Biography.
That is not this story.
Here, instead, is Dylan's second thirty years. Across an abecedarium of chapters surveying his albums, performances, films, and books since 1991--since that rainy February night in New York City when Dylan, then forty-nine, accepted a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, signaling in effect that his extraordinary vocation as a vital and indispensable creative force had ended, was over--After the Flood reveals Dylan's creative output during the last three decades as his most ambitious and accomplished yet.
Drawing on thousands of pages from Dylan's newly opened archive in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and anatomizing hundreds of published and unpublished lyrics, liner notes, and more, celebrated poet and biographer Robert Polito demonstrates how Dylan evolved a late musical style that has equally embodied and resisted its era, interweaving folk process and American and world history, and transforming spectral cultural memory into devastating inspiration. Polito thus establishes Dylan as an intensely literary songwriter whose recent writings, especially, are dynamic, intricate, and far-reaching collages.
Between Good as I Been to You (1992) and Shadow Kingdom (2023), across Desert Storm, 9/11, and COVID-19, Polito shows that Dylan revitalized lines and contexts from sources as diverse as classical Greece and Rome, the American Civil War, and film noir, tipping Henry Timrod, poet laureate of the Confederacy, into Muddy Waters; slanting Herman Melville, John Winthrop, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow into Stephen Foster, Dan Emmett, and Al Jolson; and secreting Marcel Proust into his own literal California backyard--to touch on just a few of the storerooms inside Dylan's astonishing "memory palace."
Imaginatively researched, boldly arranged, and with elegiac insights into the cunning behind his songs, After the Flood is an essential revision and continuation of the Dylan saga, and a must-read for all Dylan enthusiasts.
Author: Robert Polito
Publisher: Liveright Publishing Corporation
Published: 01/27/2026
Pages: 384
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.38lbs
Size: 9.24h x 6.36w x 1.12d
ISBN: 9780871402936
Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 10/13/2025
Kirkus Reviews 11/15/2025
About the Author
Polito, Robert: - Robert Polito served as president of the Poetry Foundation from 2013 to 2015. The founding director of the Graduate Writing and Writing and Democracy Programs at the New School, Polito teaches writing and literature. For his book Savage Art, he was awarded the NBCC Award in Biography.
Returns Policy
You may return most new, unopened items within 30 days of delivery for a full refund. We'll also pay the return shipping costs if the return is a result of our error (you received an incorrect or defective item, etc.).
You should expect to receive your refund within four weeks of giving your package to the return shipper, however, in many cases you will receive a refund more quickly. This time period includes the transit time for us to receive your return from the shipper (5 to 10 business days), the time it takes us to process your return once we receive it (3 to 5 business days), and the time it takes your bank to process our refund request (5 to 10 business days).
If you need to return an item, simply login to your account, view the order using the "Complete Orders" link under the My Account menu and click the Return Item(s) button. We'll notify you via e-mail of your refund once we've received and processed the returned item.
Shipping
We can ship to virtually any address in the world. Note that there are restrictions on some products, and some products cannot be shipped to international destinations.
When you place an order, we will estimate shipping and delivery dates for you based on the availability of your items and the shipping options you choose. Depending on the shipping provider you choose, shipping date estimates may appear on the shipping quotes page.
Please also note that the shipping rates for many items we sell are weight-based. The weight of any such item can be found on its detail page. To reflect the policies of the shipping companies we use, all weights will be rounded up to the next full pound.
- Choosing a selection results in a full page refresh.