The Odd Couple

The Odd Couple

Warren Hershman

May 1941 marked the birth of two men who may have arrived quietly, but today are still leading resounding lives. In many ways, they could not be more different. Yet their impact reveals an important dimension of human nature that is of considerable value in these contentious times.

I first “met” Bob Dylan in the early 1970’s, in my basement. He was a featured artist on the stereo we would play on afternoons and weekends in high school while my friends and I would hang, talk about sports, tall tales, and girls, and play ping pong. The “thwack” of the ball hitting racket was accompanied by music from many musicians, but the big three albums were clearly the Beatles Let It Be, Simon & Garfunkel‘s Greatest Hits, and Dylan’s 1967 Greatest Hits. At this point, Dylan had already been dubbed “ the voice of his generation” with his protest songs about civil rights and the threat of war. He had transitioned from folk to electric and rock and roll, and then blues, country and later, gospel. Dylan‘s distinctive voice could range from nasal and conversational in a tune like “Blowin’ in the Wind” to a snarling, abrasive sound in “Like a Rolling Stone”. It was definitely an acquired taste, but I found authenticity in its emotional rawness. The imagery, metaphors and other poetic effects knocked my socks off.

I “met”columnist George Will, in the mid -1970’s. I’d read his Op Ed pieces in the Washington Post at my college library, and I was soon following his writing at Newsweek. I especially enjoyed his clarity of thought and his measured use of quotations. And it seemed like every third paragraph, he sent me scurrying to the dictionary in order to better grasp his claims. In an age of change and an “anything goes” zeitgeist, Will swam strongly against the cultural and political currents most popular among my generation. He was and remains a classic conservative.

I still have a copy of his first collection of essays, The Pursuit of Happiness and Other Sobering Thoughts. As he wrote in its 1979 introduction, “My subject is not what is secret, but what is latent, the kernel of principle and other significance that exists, recognized or not, inside of events, actions, policies, and manners.” He wrote with considerable insight about culture, American governance and citizenry, the international stage, and baseball, about people from Winston Churchill to Anne Frank, and movingly about his father Frederick and his son Jonathan who has Down’s syndrome. Serious stuff leavened with humor. As he wrote, “ a pleasant meal should include sherbet, as well as meat…” And he has done this extremely well over 6 decades.

Will, along with the late Charles Krauthhammer, challenged my center- left thinking, and rocked my liberal moorings in the calm, blue harbor with strong arguments from the right. Not so strong, however, on climate change where I have strongly disagreed with Will. But the tempests Will stirred up have helped me sharpen who I am and what I stand for. As a counterweight, he has reminded me about the wisdom of the marketplace, the downsides of even a well-intended but sprawling bureaucracy, and the necessity of military strength. And he leaves me with a healthy skepticism about the use of government power. I had to confront his ideas even if they initially made me uncomfortable. Like wearing pants that are too snug at the waist, I needed to reevaluate, make some adjustments, or at at least accommodate these realities.

I lost track of Dylan for a while during his fallow period shortly after Blood on the Tracks in 1975 but I have returned in recent decades. I marvel at his ability to reinvent himself and adapt to his changing voice. He has written new songs (more than 600 total), conducted more than 2000 concerts since the year 2000, moved across musical genres, and rearranged older songs such that I often hardly recognize them.

From the early folk and protest songs such as Blowing in the Wind, The Times They are A’changin’, A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall, to the revolutionary Like a Rolling Stone, the rebellious, self- critical My Back Pages, the dreamlike Tamborine Man, the cool and cryptic Jokerman, to the sweet and tender If Not for You and Make You Feel my Love, the intimacy and physical desire of Lay Lady Lay, the spiritual Shooting Star, the parental love, joy and earnestness of Forever Young, to the snarling, scornful Positively 4th Street, the rage and bitterness of Idiot Wind, the suppressed grief of Most of the Time, the resignation, loneliness and fatigue of It’s Not Dark Yet, to the acceptance, perseverance, spiritual longing and hopefulness of Trying to Get to Heaven. And, he could really spin a yarn: songs like Brownsville Girl, Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues, and Tangled Up in Blue. The list and range are enormous, and I could go on, and on. Dylan frequently conveyed multiple emotions within a single song, capturing a nuanced, dialectic reality. A songbook that is nonpareil.

Over the years, Dylan‘s voice has been derided by many as sounding froggy and, at times, undecipherable. I find it to be a very well-calibrated instrument with great phrasing and expressive control that conveys the emotions and context, a snug fit between sound and meaning. The great singer-songwriter Paul Simon so aptly describes Dylan’s ironic sound when comparing it to his own, “ One of my deficiencies is my voice sounds sincere. I’ve tried to sound ironic. I don’t. I can’t. Dylan, everything he sings has two meanings. He’s telling you the truth and making fun of you at the same time.”

Dylan and Will differ, both on the surface, and on deeper dive. Will consistently dresses in a restrained, formal style, embodying the classic conservative he is. While Dylan’s style has evolved, he typically presents in a rumpled manner with dark clothes and is often masked by sunglasses and hats. Will emphasizes the analytic brain while Dylan has touched virtually every emotion imaginable and in great depth. Will is Mr. Steady, the tried and true, and Dylan embodies change, the imagination, the spiritual. You know where Will stands on issues; Dylan is often deflecting, mysterious. Will is Mr. Prose; Dylan is the lyrical poet. Will often provides answers while Dylan tends to raise more questions. The world seems a bit clearer, more definitive when viewed through the Will lens, and it feels grayer, evolving, contradicting, even mystical through Dylan’s.

And they have a number of important attributes in common. Both are products of the US Midwest. Despite their fame, neither seeks out attention. Both have displayed considerable courage and follow their own True North. Will left the Republican Party, after it nominated Donald Trump for President in 2016, leaving him, largely without a political home. Dylan has continuously gone against the grain, morphing numerous times from folk to electric to gospel to blues… In May 1963, prior to attaining major commercial success, the largely unknown Dylan walked out on rehearsals for the extremely popular Ed Sullivan TV show, when censors banned him from singing the song, Talkin John Birch Paranoid Blues. Years later, Dylan’s efforts helped free boxer Rubin “Hurricane” Carter who was wrongfully convicted and imprisoned for murder. Through benefit concerts and the writing of the protest song “Hurricane” that detailed the racial profiling and false testimonies underlying his conviction, Dylan brought publicity to the issue and funds for Carter’s legal appeals. Both Will and Dylan have been recognized for their superior work. Will was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for his exceptional prose. Dylan has won the Nobel Prize in Literature, numerous Grammy Awards, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Ironically, at one point, the late Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater was both Will’s and Dylan’s favorite politician. Go figure.

So where am I going with all this? First, I salute these two octogenarians for how they have educated, challenged, and inspired me over the years, and continue to do so. I also want to pay homage to these 2 men for their sustained excellence and great works. Each in his own way makes the pages sing, makes words come alive. As of this writing, both continue to impressively ply their crafts at the age of 85, and remain relevant today

In their own words, Will’s proclamation almost 50 years ago:

“Men and women are biological facts. Ladies and gentlemen -citizens- are social artifacts, works of politic art. They carry the culture that is sustained by wise laws, and traditions of civility. At the end of the day, we are right to judge society by the character of the people it produces. That is why statecraft is inevitably soul craft.”

To which Dylan might add a slight twist:

“Half -wracked prejudice leaped forth

‘Rip down all hate,’ I screamed

Lies that life is black-and-white

Spoke from my skull, I dreamed

Romantic facts of musketeers

Foundationed deep, somehow…

In a soldier’s stance, I aimed my hand

At the mongrel dogs who teach

Fearing not I’d become my enemy

In the instant that I preach

My existence led by confusion boats

Mutiny from stern to bow

Ah, but I was so much older then

I’m younger than that now” (from My Back Pages. 1964)

Bob Dylan and George F. Will are both, at once, very different and have commonalities. I have room in my mind for both members of this “odd couple”because as the poet Walt Whitman wrote, and Dylan echoed a century and a half later, “I contain multitudes”. Don’t we all. At a time when we celebrate 250 years of our great national experiment, and at a time when we also live in a nation splintered by non-facts, exclusive identity attachment, and rancor directed at those outside of “our group”, perhaps we can better understand one another and find connections by tapping into the multitudes within each of us, to find what we share in common, and to build an appreciation for how our differences shape us.