Ken Tucker

After the Flood takes the form of an abecedarian, or alphabet book.

26 chapters, each beginning with a letter of the alphabet that reveals a topic.

The chapter beginning with Q, for example, examines quotations Dylan has embedded in his work.

Chapter R discusses how Dylan rewrites and revises.

The book itself is a flood of ideas, of information, of emotion.

As it proceeds, we begin to learn things about the author, that the writing of this book, for example, was interrupted by an illness that was almost fatal.

but which also inspired him to make sure he completed it.

Steady and sure.

Nothing more empty than what I must endure.

I'm dressed in the light that shines from the sun.

I could stone you to death for the wrongs that you've done.

Sooner or later, you'll make a mistake.

I'll put you in a chain that you'll never break.

Legs and arms and body and bone.

The 84-year-old Bob Dylan is back out on tour.

Early reports say he and his band have opted to play acoustic instruments this time around.

Robert Pulido has also just published a Library of America collection of key novels by the noir fiction master Jim Thompson.

That makes sense, since After the Flood renders Dylan the hard-boiled protagonist of his own ever-lengthening career, one long mystery that will never be fully solved.

Life is a battlefield And it'll drag you right through hell Bites like a rattlesnake The kind that you just don't see on the trail And I miss my father every day The kind of pain I pray don't fade away And the one

Guide me down the road Yeah, grief is only love