Book Notes

The Largehearted Boy Book Notes feature has been posted... Check it out!

Here is an excerpt:

In his own words, here is Ben Tanzer's Book Notes essay for his novel, Most Likely You Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine:

Bob Dylan, Most Likely You Go Your Way and I’ll Go Mine

Growing-up in my house you had three options if you wanted to listen to music, Bob Dylan, The Beatles or some random Klezmer band from Budapest. Anyway, I always listen to music when I’m writing and while working on one of the drafts of the book this song came on and it just seemed to have the right vibe. Thematically it works of course because it’s clearly a song about breaking-up and this is a story about a couple who comes together quickly, implodes just as quickly and then maybe somehow comes back together. But it wasn’t just the theme that worked for me, there are a million break-up songs that I could have referenced during the book, it was the fact that it is both kind of humorous and kind of dark, something I ‘m always trying to aim for when I write. And it was Dylan, someone who I purposely name-drop in the book as a figure who is all-knowing in only ways that Yoda, John Hughes and maybe Bruce Springsteen would understand. The catch there of course, is that once you invoke Dylan you have all the genius-God-should be a Nobel Prize winner stuff that comes with it. Still, when I was growing-up he was just a singer story-teller that my dad claimed my mom had discovered in the early sixties and our family owned in some way. Sort of like the Gore family and the internet.

Read the rest over at Largehearted Boy!