Cult of Dylan

Most of us have known someone with a Bob Dylan obsession. They're different from Dead Heads in that these folks typically eschew festival antics and mood-altering substances, choosing instead to pore over every album, bootleg tape and song lyric for special meaning. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Kinney profiles a handful of such types, tagging along on pilgrimages to Dylan's Hibbing, Minn., hometown, and sifting through piles of memorabilia and ephemera. What emerges in The Dylanologists: Adventures in the Land of Bob (Simon & Schuster, $25) is an at times lighthearted view of slightly more intellectual fanatics than the Elvis worshippers and Beatlemaniacs, but still people who import more power to cultural figures than the figures themselves would grant—or with which they'd be comfortable.