"Highway 61 Revisited" resonates because of its enduring emotional appeal. Few songwriters before Dylan or since have combined so effectively the intensely personal with the spectacularly universal. In "Like a Rolling Stone", his gleeful excoriation of Miss Lonely (Edie Sedgwick? Joan Baez? A composite "type"?) fuses with the evocation of a hip new zeitgeist to produce a veritable anthem. In "Ballad of a Thin Man", the younger generation's confusion is thrown back in the establishment's face, even as Dylan vents his disgust with the critics who laboured to catalogue him. And in "Desolation Row", he reaches the zenith of his own brand of surrealist paranoia, that here attains the atmospheric intensity of a full-fledged nightmare. Between its many flourishes of gallows humour, this is one of the most immaculately frightful songs ever recorded, with its relentless imagery of communal executions, its parade of fallen giants and triumphant local losers, its epic length and even the mournful sweetness of Bloomfield's flamenco-inspired fills. In this book, Mark Polizzotti examines just what makes the songs on "Highway 61 Revisited" so affecting, how they work together as a suite, and how lyrics, melody, and arrangements combine to create an unusually potent mix. He blends musical and literary analysis of the songs themselves, biography (where appropriate) and recording information (where helpful). And he focuses on Dylan's mythic presence in the mid-60s, when he emerged from his proletarian incarnation to become the American Rimbaud. The comparison has been made by others, including Dylan, and it illuminates much about his mid-sixties career, for in many respects "Highway 61" is rock 'n' roll's answer to "A Season in Hell".

本书作者马克·波利佐提是一位传记作家、评论家、翻译家、编辑和诗人。2016年，他获得了美国艺术与文学学院颁发的文学奖，并被法国文化部授予“文学与艺术”骑士勋章。他的著作包括《思想的革命:安德烈·布勒东的一生》（Revolution of the Mind: The Life of Andre Breton）、《鲍勃·迪伦:重返61号公路》。波利佐提的随笔和评论发表在《新共和》、《书报》、《国家》、《华尔街日报》、《党派评论》等刊物上。他主管纽约大都会艺术博物馆的出版项目。