Portrait of the artist as human

MARQUEE

on DVD, I found myself thinking about the V S Naipaul controversy "" specifically, the outbursts from the media and the public after the release of damning excerpts from a new biography.

"Naipaul tortured wife!" screamed reductive headlines, making it seem like a crime demanding immediate and merciless prosecution had come to light.

You had to read the reports more closely for the less dramatic picture to emerge: that of a man expressing the guilt he still feels for his contribution to a bad marriage, and acknowledging that he was a very bad husband.

Human nature being what it is, it's inevitable that such revelations about a public figure should be followed by smug, self-righteous outrage, even from those (dare one say, especially from those?) who are different from Naipaul mainly in that they lack the ability to be self-critical.

But what I found more interesting was the gloating over the supposed contrast between the greatness of Naipaul's work and his failures in a private relationship: this writer who so masterfully held the light up to our foibles, how dare he have any shortcomings himself?

There are parallels in No Direction Home, which covers five of the defining years in Bob Dylan's career: between 1961, when he came to New York City, a gawky folk singer, and 1966, by which time he had taken up the electric guitar, adopted a (possibly ironic) mainstream rock-star persona and, in the process, alienated many early fans.

By the mid-1960s, Dylan had come to represent the counter-culture "" his songs had given a voice to the Civil Rights Movement and captured the zeitgeist of a fascinatingly turbulent period. When he went electric, there were cries of anguish. His folk-music fans claimed that the "pure" Dylan was the shy troubadour who strummed an acoustic guitar, wrote and sang straightforward lyrics like "Blowin in the Wind" and "Masters of War" "" easy-to-label "topical" songs. They couldn't deal with the rock star who penned surreal, allusive lines about Ezra Pound and T S Eliot fighting in the captain's tower while calypso singers laughed at them and fishermen threw flowers.

But Dylan reserved the right not to explain his work or defend his artistic and personal choices. He reserved the right to be selfish and self-absorbed, to not display a political conscience, to not personally take part in the rallies and causes that his songs had become anthems for. My favourite bits of the documentary are his interactions with reporters.

At press conferences, he pays little heed to earnest journalists, looking at them in a glassy-eyed way, occasionally working up just enough interest to mock their questions. ("What do you have to say about the recurring motorcycle imagery in your songs?" Answer: "Um, I think we all like motorcycles to some degree.") They get angry, insist that he speak about his own importance as an artist.

"What do you want me to say, man?" he whines back. It's clear that he is fed up of the constant scrutiny, the second-guessing of his motives and the fact that people didn't understand his need to take new directions rather than remain pigeonholed by others' expectations. Interspersed with all this is footage of distressed fans, claiming that he had "sold out" or "gone commercial".

No Direction Home is notable for its exploration of the enigmatic, often tortured relationship between an artist and his audience; how certain people can become symbols for others' hopes and dreams, and how thin the line can be between worshipping someone and feeling betrayed by them.

It's also a treasure trove of the period's music, with performances by Hank Williams, Odetta, Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, Joan Baez and, of course, Dylan himself. Watching him on stage, I realised the truth of the D H Lawrence aphorism "Never trust the teller "" trust the tale". An artist's work can tell his story more eloquently than interviews or biographies ever can.

(jaiarjun@gmail.com)