A Talk in Tulsa
“All that Was Missing Was Gloria Grahame: Noir Tones in 21st Century Bob Dylan”
The World of Bob Dylan
Switchyard
Tulsa 3 June 2023
I want to thank Sean Latham of the University of Tulsa and the director of this year’s extraordinarily ambitious Switchyard Festival for again inviting me to the World of Bob Dylan conference. This is a very special kind of conference. It’s a place where people bring their best work, where they give what they have to live up to their subjects and their audiences. People aren’t coming here with a presentation they’ve already recycled at other conferences ten or twenty times. There’s no one dithering on about what they’re going to do and how they’re going to do it and what they’re not going to do and why and, Oh! I guess my time is up and so get an appearance to cite on their CV and not have to actually do anything. Here people come with a respect for the people who might be listening to them and respect for themselves as they earn it.
Now, today I’m going to be talking about Bob Dylan’s work in this century and what’s come to be called noir.
If we use the word noir today, whatever we’re talking about goes back to film noir—movies, at least classically, from the '40s and '50s. What Eddie Muller presents every Saturday on his Turner Classic Movies show “Noir Alley.”