nyone fortunate enough to have taken Professor Renza’s class on Bob Dylan knows this one already. The syllabus for the course was littered with gems, but Mike Marqusee’s analysis of Dylan’s relationship with the politics of the’60s sparkled the brightest. “Wicked Messenger” puts his evolving musical and lyrical aesthetic into the context both of social circumstances and his own evolving political sensibilities.

Conventional wisdom tells that after Bob Dylan rose to fame as an overtly political member of the Greenwich Village folk scene, he abruptly and aggressively rejected topical songwriting for a more personal focus around’64 or’65. However, Marqusee believes that the progression of Dylan’s career was not so black-and-white. Even when the days of “The Times They Are A-Changin’” and “Blowin’ in the Wind” were long gone, political and social themes continued to slither their way into his songs. In his late’60s works (primarily the albums “Bringin’ It All Back Home,” “Highway 61 Revisited,” and “Blonde on Blonde”), these issues were often disguised by poetry rather than directly confronted. Give another listen to “Subterranean Homesick Blues,” “Ballad of a Thin Man,” or “Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again.” Through his wild and metaphoric imagery, Dylan seems to be pondering the absurdity of modern America, and groping for a solution.

“Wicked Messenger” engages in historical and literary criticism so effortlessly that it never seems ponderous. Marqusee generously sprinkles anecdotes from Dylan’s life to make the references to the politics of the era more personal than polemical. Bob Dylan’s songs are more than just pop hits; they are incisive and sensitive insights into the world in which he wrote, and in which we continue to live. You will find no better introduction to Dylan’s politics than “Wicked Messenger.”