鲍勃•迪伦能够激励人心吗？作为资深迪伦粉丝，我的答案是确定无疑。上世纪80年代初期，我还是一名少年吉他迷。那时我就开始听迪伦的音乐。当时我发现了《放任自流的鲍勃•迪伦》（The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan），这张专辑在我出生前两年发行。我会坐在当时所念寄宿学校的宿舍里，在自己的先锋卡带机上着魔似地按倒带和播放键，直到搞清楚迪伦在写给前女友的甜苦情歌《不必多想，一切会好》（Don't Think Twice, It's All Right）中所使用的弹拨技巧。

    当时我的情感经历还是一张白纸，所以这首歌为何会对我具有如此大的感染力，原因并不明显。原因并不是因为迪伦是我那一代人的声音。当然，前提是这个词如果可以拿来描述我们这拨成长于里根时代、远离政治的预科生的话。但是，跟大多数同龄人一样，我梦想着有一天能够在全世界留下自己的印记。迪伦在那方面似乎很有一套，读一读他在上世纪60年代以及之后的功绩，无论是从诚挚的民谣歌手到愤怒的摇滚歌手，从暗讽的嬉皮士到和悦的讲述者，还是从圣愚到褪色的蓝调乐手，他看起来总能领先同代人一步。我十分欣赏他这一点。像所有伟大的演员一样，迪伦在扮演每一个角色时都具有绝对的说服力，但接着他就又转移到新的角色中去了。

    当然，迪伦的角色诠释之所以有趣，只是因为他的音乐非常伟大。我从高中毕业已近30年，当我听到极具超现实主义风格的《地下乡愁蓝调》（Subterranean Homesick Blues）、阿尔•库珀在《像一块滚石》（Like A Rolling Stone）开篇小节那高亢的电子琴前奏、迪伦在《弱者的歌谣》（Ballad of a Thin Man）中猛烈地诘问琼斯先生、自己从《血之轨迹》（Blood on the Tracks）——插一句，这是我买过的分手主题专辑中最棒的一张——任意挑选一段进行弹奏，我仍然会感到兴奋。

    在我最喜爱的一首歌曲中，迪伦写道：“当救护车已经远去，最后唯一剩下的声响，只有灰姑娘，在那条荒凉小街上，默默地扫地。”我从未走过那《荒凉小街》（Desolation Row），而迪伦自己也没有。但对我来说，它就跟《阿尔丁森林》（The Forest of Arden），或简•奥斯汀笔下摄政时期英国的村落和庄园，或托马斯•品钦笔下的占领区一样真实。在我心目中，这些虚构的地方在某种程度上比我前往杂货店时走过的街道更为真实，因为我更加关心前者。

    所以没错，迪伦确实激励了我。但他的这种激励是否是那种予人动力、励志自助的激励呢？作为一位文化人物，鲍勃•迪伦是否能够跟霍雷肖•阿尔杰、戴尔•卡耐基、托尼•罗宾斯、史蒂芬•柯维以及奥普拉•温弗瑞这些人相提并论？我们是否应该参照迪伦的生活和工作来寻找结交朋友、影响他人以及如何谋生这些问题的答案呢？

    是的，财经网站市场观察（MarketWatch.com）的专栏作家乔恩•弗里德曼就是这种观点。他在《忘记今天：鲍勃•迪伦在（再）发明创造、远离怀疑论者以及发起个人革命上的天赋》（Forget About Today: Bob Dylan's Genius For (Re)Invention, Shunning the Naysayers, and Creating a Personal Revolution）一书中写道：“我认为，凭着他那不可思议的天赋，迪伦能够向人们提供人生教益。弗里德曼试图通过活泼、简短的章节来证明自己的观点，这些章节从迪伦那载入史册的漫长音乐生涯中截取特定的片段，并从中提取出道德教益。

    Is Bob Dylan inspiring? As a lifelong Dylan fan, my answer is yes, absolutely. I started listening to Dylan as a teenage guitar nerd in the early 1980s, when I discovered The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, an album released two years before my birth. I would sit in my dorm room at boarding school, obsessively hitting rewind-play on my Pioneer cassette deck until I figured out the picking pattern that Dylan used in "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right," his bittersweet sendoff to an ex-lover.

    I had zero romantic experience at the time, so it's not obvious why that particular song affected me so much. It's not like Dylan was the voice of my generation, if you can apply that portentous word to a bunch of politically disengaged preppy kids growing up in the Reagan era. But like most teenagers, I dreamed about one day putting my mark on the world. Dylan seemed cool that way: Reading about his exploits in the Sixties and later, I loved how he always seemed to stay at least one step ahead of his own generation, mutating from earnest folkie to angry rocker, from snide hipster to genial country raconteur, from holy fool to weathered bluesman. Like all great actors, he inhabited each new role with absolute conviction and then moved on to the next one.

    Dylan's role-playing is only interesting, of course, because his music is so strong. I've been out of high school for nearly 30 years, and I still get excited when I hear the breakneck surrealism of "Subterranean Homesick Blues", or when Al Kooper's towering organ riff kicks in during the opening bars of "Like A Rolling Stone," or when Dylan savages the hapless Mr. Jones in "Ballad of a Thin Man," or when I play anything off Blood on the Tracks, for my money the best breakup album of all time.

    In one of my favorite Dylan songs, he writes: "And the only sound that's left/After the ambulances go/Is Cinderella sweeping up/On Desolation Row." I've never walked down Desolation Row, and neither has Dylan. But it's just as real to me as the Forest of Arden, or the villages and manor houses of Jane Austen's Regency England, or Thomas Pynchon's Zone. In some ways, these fictional places seem more real than the physical streets that I navigate on my way to the grocery store, because I care about them more.

    So yeah, Dylan inspires me. But is he inspiring in a motivational, self-help-ish kind of way? As a cultural figure, does he belong on the same list as Horatio Alger, Dale Carnegie, Tony Robbins, Steven Covey, and Oprah Winfrey? Should we consult Dylan's life and work for answers on how to win friends, influence people, and locate our cheese?

    Yes, argues MarketWatch.com columnist Jon Friedman. "I think Dylan can teach people life lessons based on his mysterious genius," he writes on page one of Forget About Today: Bob Dylan's Genius For (Re)Invention, Shunning the Naysayers, and Creating a Personal Revolution.Friedman attempts to prove his case with short, zippy chapters that extract morals from particular episodes in Dylan's long and relentlessly chronicled career.

    举例来说，在“坚持你的坚持”（Keep on Keepin' On）一章中，我们了解到迪伦是一位固执的家伙，他“不管发生什么都会挑战自我、开拓进取。”在“得罪人的艺术”（The Fine Art of Pissing People Off）一章中，弗里德曼记叙了迪伦年轻时的一段轶事。当时，迪伦在参加《小城名流》（The Ed Sullivan Show）节目，但是神经紧张的电视审查员禁止他演唱《约翰•伯区的狂想蓝调》（Talking John Birch Paranoid Blues）这首歌，因为它讽刺了上世纪60年代美国的共产主义威胁妄想症。于是，迪伦拂袖而去。得分！虽然他错过了在《小城名流》广大观众面前唱歌的机会，但迪伦的声誉却因反抗这位审查员而在反主流文化中达到了顶点。教益呢？“如果你真正相信某件事情，不管多么微不足道，它都值得捍卫。”

    在1965年的“新港民谣音乐节”（Newport Folk Festival）上，年龄稍长的迪伦因为使用电吉他而激怒了民谣原教旨主义拥护者。“通过转向电音，”弗里德曼写道，“迪伦敢于做出一些大多数人一辈子都没有勇气干的事情，那就是颠覆我们自己过去的成功。”

    如此这般，通过从明尼苏达大学（University of Minnesota）辍学前往格林威治村（Greenwich Village）追寻自己的民谣音乐事业，迪伦教会我们在舒适区以外实现自我；通过在1969年专辑《纳什维尔的天际线》（Nashville Skyline）中成功地使用乡村音乐元素，迪伦证明了“可信就是一切”。教益呢？“如果你打算呈现一种新的面貌，那你最好确保自己对别人来说是可信的。”另外，事实证明，市场营销人员也可从迪伦上世纪80年代末不间断的巡演日程中学习跟新客户群持续打好关系的重要性。

    我最初难以接受这本书的地方在于，弗里德曼将鲍勃•迪伦那迷人的生活以及不朽的音乐事业浓缩成一系列令人沮丧的、贺曼贺卡式的陈词滥调。作为一种文学技巧，这本书一路倒退到巴特勒的《圣徒的生活》（The Lives of the Saints）。跟所有圣徒传记一样，叙事之丰富及议论之尖锐都为滔滔不绝的道德训诫提供了原料。

    迪伦的粉丝无法从《忘记今天》中找到太多新的信息，这一点确凿无疑。尽管弗里德曼在写作这本书时采访了很多跟迪伦亲近的人以及相关专家——包括The Band乐队的罗比•罗伯逊这样的音乐名人以及迪伦前私人助理这样的后台人员——但他仍然严重依赖公开发表的访谈以及迪伦在2004年出版的回忆录《编年史：第一卷》（Chronicles: Volume One）。迪伦通过经纪人礼貌地回绝了弗里德曼的采访请求，这我倒能理解。我猜想，对迪伦这样一位总是被赋予强烈神秘感的艺术家来说，将他的人生分解成鼓动积极性的陈词滥调，这种想法可能并不吸引人。

    另一方面，对于迪伦的重要性，弗里德曼塑造出了一个清晰而充满激情的行为榜样，而不是艺术家或文化符号。他总结的教益显然十分陈腐，但如果你喜爱鲍勃•迪伦同时也喜爱励志文学，那你可能会喜欢这本书。说不准你还有可能搬到曼哈顿下城，发动一场革命呢。谁知道呢？

    译者：王灿均

    In the chapter "Keep on Keepin' On," for example, we learn that Dylan is a persistent dude who "challenges himself to forge ahead, no matter what." In "The Fine Art of Pissing People Off," Friedman writes about the young Dylan walking off the set of The Ed Sullivan Show when a nervous network censor ruled that he couldn't sing "Talkin' John Birch Paranoid Blues," a song that lampoons '60s-era American paranoia about the Communist threat. Score! Although he missed the chance to sing for Sullivan's vast audience, Dylan achieved maximum counterculture cred for defying the man. The lesson? "If you truly believe in something, however small, it's worth standing up for."

    An only slightly older Dylan would infuriate legions of acoustic folk purists by strapping on an electric guitar at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. "By going electric," Friedman writes, "Dylan dared to do something most of us wouldn't have the courage to do in our own lives: tamper with our track record of success."

    And so it goes. By dropping out of the University of Minnesota and moving to Greenwich Village to pursue a career in folk music, Dylan apparently taught us to find fulfillment outside our comfort zone. By successfully adopting a country sound in the 1969 album Nashville Skyline, he proved that "credibility is everything." The lesson? "If you're going to create a new persona for yourself, you had better make sure you seem authentic to other people." And marketers, it turns out, can study Dylan's relentless touring schedule since the late 1980s to learn the importance of constantly forging relationships with new customer segments.

    My initial, dyspeptic take on this book was that Friedman had reduced Bob Dylan's fascinating life and monumental body of work to a series of depressing Hallmark clichés. As a literary technique, this one goes all the way back to Butler's Lives of the Saints. As with all hagiography, narrative richness and critical acuity both yield to the relentless imparting of moral lessons.

    It's true that Dylan fans won't find much new information in Forget About Today. Although Friedman interviewed many Dylan intimates and experts for this book, including musical luminaries like Robbie Robertson of The Band and backstage figures like Dylan's former personal assistant, he relies heavily on published interviews and on Dylan's own 2004 memoir, Chronicles: Volume One. Through his management, Dylan politely declined Friedman's request for an interview, and I can't say that I blame him. I would guess that for Dylan, an artist who has always imparted a strong sense of mystery, the idea of having his life dissected into motivational bromides was probably unappealing.

    On the other hand, Friedman has produced a clear, passionate case for Dylan's importance as a personal role model, rather than an artist or a cultural symbol. The lessons that he draws are no less true for being trite. If you love Bob Dylan, and you enjoy self-help literature, you'll probably like this book. Who knows, you might even move to lower Manhattan and start a revolution.