PERHAPS A GIFT VOUCHER FOR MUM?: MOTHER'S DAY
Alessandro Portelli is professor emeritus of American literature at the University of Rome and was for many years a faculty member of the Columbia Oral History Summer Institute. His books include The Text and the Voice: Writing, Speaking, Democracy, and American Literature (Columbia, 1994) and They Say in Harlan County: An Oral History (2011).
Hard Rain is a rich and genre-busting meditation on oral history, on culture, on folklore, on poetry, on music, on Bob Dylan, and on many other things besides. Portelli, like Bob Dylan, brings to life many voices that are often not heard, and his book radiates critical acumen, encyclopedic knowledge and a bracing freshness of vision. -- Mitchell Duneier, author of <i>Ghetto: The Invention of a Place, the History of an Idea</i> While it is common knowledge that Dylan modeled 'Hard Rain' after 'Lord Randal,' Portelli treats the two songs equally. Neither is a footnote in the history of the other. Offering a wonderful analysis of orality and memory, Hard Rain represents a great contribution to our understanding of oral cultures by analyzing a 1960s classic song along with a seventeenth-century ballad. Captivating. -- Yolanda Chavez Leyva, University of Texas at El Paso Hard Rain is a tapestry of autobiographical essay, music criticism, and pop culture reflection. The style is lovely, and Portelli addresses everything from innocence and apocalypse to lyric structure and oral tradition mnemonic devices through his comparison of Bob Dylan's 'Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall' to the traditional folk song 'Lord Randal.' -- Mary Larson, Oklahoma State University
