Week 4 Response

This week’s readings really give an idea about what the “art scene” was in New York City in the 1960s. It was a place where it seems that stars were born, where future household names gathered and interacted, building on each other’s creativity and developing forms distinct to the 1960s. Bob Dylan’s Chronicles in particular seeks to draw one into the world of the Greenwich Village and the lives of people who lived there. He links names like Woodie Guthrie, Bobby Neuwirth, and Harry Belafonte into a tapestry of his life. He is an artist, surrounded by, and inspired by other artists. St. Marks is Dead, meanwhile, offers a different perspective of growing up in this time in this area and watching it change, and how residents dealt with diversity. Calhoun explores the violence between the “Polish families, Jewish families, Puerto-Ricans, and new-comer beats,” (106). More than just artists, New York City was a place where a variety of different groups lived and fought in close quarters.

As we discussed in class, this diversity contributed to diverse forms of art that Dylan does not necessarily explore. Folk artists and pop artists existed in the same spaces. Caroline King, for example, was a native, middle class, New Yorker from Queens. The ghost-writer of hundreds of songs sung in the 1960s, she walked the same streets as Bob Dylan, though they might have run in different circles. Though a writer of pop music, she lived at the same time in the same area as Andy Warhol, who sought to criticize pop and mass consumption.

-Rachel Smalle