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sports athletics SPORTS Roundup ICE HOCKEY Kings have chance to clinch Stanley Cup on home ice For the Los Angeles Kings,the National HockeyLeague playoffs are looking more and more like acoronation, a regal procession to the StanleyCup. The Kings’ progress continuedSaturday night in Newark, New Jersey,with their second consecutive 2-1 overtime victory over the New JerseyDevils. The Kings now lead by two games to none as the seriesmoves to Los Angeles. The Kings’victory extended their road winning streak in playoffs to 10— 12 if the postseasonfrom last year is included. Theyare 10-0 on the road this spring after winning bothgamesat New Jersey. Their overall record this postseasonimproved to 14-2asthey head home forGame 3 on Monday and Game 4 on Wednesday,when they could clinch the first championship in the club’s45-year history. BASKETBALL Thunder wins 2nd straight to even series with Spurs Kevin Durant scored18of his 36 points in a scintillating final seven minutes, Serge Ibaka addedacareer-high 26 points and theOklahoma CityThunder evened the National Basketball Association Western Conference finals at two games apiece by beating the San Antonio Spurs, 109-103. Afterseeing his team’s15-point lead dwindletofour, Durant took over midway through the fourthquarterSaturday in Oklahoma Citybyscoring all 16 of the Thunder’spointsinlittle more than 5 minutes to keep the Spurs at bay. The seriesnow heads back to San Antonio, Texas. Tim Duncan had 21 points for San Antonio, which had won20 in a row before losing Game 3. (AP) SOCCER Stars shine for Argentina as it wallops Ecuador Argentina scored three goals in nine minutes to overpowerEcuador, 4-0, and move atop the South American World Cupqualifying standings. Argentina looked liketheteam it is expected to be Saturday in Buenos Aires withSergioAgüeroopening the scoring in the 23rd, before Gonzalo Higuaíndoubled the advantage in the 30th,taking a pass fromLionel Messi.Messi scored two minuteslater. (AP) To London by way of Oregon ATHLETICS BYMARYPILON EUGENE, OREGON Kenya takes unusual step of holding an Olympic qualifying race in U.S. TED S. WARREN/THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Wilson Kiprop, left, and Moses Masai qualified to represent Kenya in the 10,000 meters. Where better to hold the men’s 10,000- meter Kenyan Olympic trials than ... here? Thatwas the rationale among Kenyan running officials, who held their trials for the event in Oregon on Friday night, hoping to find out which three of their 15 distance runners to take tothe London Olympic Games. To get the best three, organizers said, they needed to take their contenders thousands of miles away from the altitudes and training conditions of their home country to compete in a climate more akin to thatof London. In spite ofKenyan men’sconsistently strong performances at international competitions, none has won a gold medal in the 10-kilometer sincethe 1968 Olympic Games inMexico City. In contrast, Ethiopians,their neighbors to the north, have scooped up gold at every Olympics sinceAtlanta in 1996. News thatthe Kenyan trials were being held in Eugene initially baffledsome in the track community here. And the decision resulted insome backlash in Kenya among those angry that their country’s trials would not be held within their borders,officials said. ‘‘We knew that the Kenyans had not been happy with the results they were getting at the 10,000-meter distance,’’ said Tom Jordan, meet director for the Prefontaine Classic, the event that was host for the Kenyan trials. ‘‘Theydominate the marathon and they have the two best milers in the world, so why can’t they win a gold medal in the Olympics at 10,000 meters?’’ Nicknamed Skinner’s Mudhole, Eugene delivered on its promise ofsoggy, London-like weather during part of the Kenyan runners’ stay. Kenyaisknown forits vivid savannahs and wildlife, but Oregon’s landscape is home tosalmon, beavers and nutria. Though Lane County did not boast much in theway of East African cuisine, the Kenyan delegationgave goodreviews to the catered pasta and meat dishes provided bythe eventorganizers. To prepare for the race Friday, the runners trained on trails along the Willamette River and Pre’s Trail, the tribute to the great University of Oregon distance runnerSteve Prefontaine, who diedat 24 in a car accident. Many of the Kenyan runners had experience training and competing in the UnitedStates, but they said thatthe additional hours required to get to Eugene, a college town with a population of about 155,000, wereworthit. ‘‘I’m very happy here,’’ Bitan Karoki said. ‘‘At this altitude, Idon’t feel too tired whenIrun.’’ Karoki said his jet lag was minimal, as well. ‘‘We’ve tried to stay busy preparing,’’ he said. The Kenyan Olympic hopefuls who madethetrip to Eugene included Micah Kogo, who wonabronze medal in the 2008 Beijing Games; Josphat Bett Kipkoech, who finished third in 10,000 meters atthePrefontaine last year;Moses Masai, who earned abronze medal in the 2009 World Championships and came in fourth atthe Beijing Games; and Wilson Kiprop, the 2010 African championships gold medalist in the 10,000 meters. About 7,800 fans piled into the stands of Hayward Field on Friday night to watch the Kenyans,the main event. The event was ‘‘basically a race that most people wouldn’t watch on television,’’ Jordan said, adding, ‘‘But here they really appreciate distance running.’’ Asspectators filedin,ominousclouds loomed overaportraitof Prefontaineon the field. After the discuses were thrown, triple jumps hopped and shorter races around the track completed, a light drizzletrickleddown. The Kenyan delegation began to warm up as the women’s 10,000 meters wrapped up around 8:30. (The Ethiopian Tirunesh Dibaba won.) The audience and athletes stood for the playing of the Kenyan national anthemshortly before 9p.m. Ten minutesinto the race, mostof the runners were still tightly packed together, anew leader popping to the front every few seconds. Theystayedathicket past the 6,000-meter mark, and only with2,000 meters left didagroup offive runners emerge to the front. Kiprop took the lead. With four laps left, the audience took to its feet, increasing the roar of clapping and stomping in the bleachers.With600 meters left, the race was among fourrunners. Kiprop crossed the finish line first, in a time of27 minutes 1.98 seconds, with Masai and Karoki behind him. Theother 12 men will not gotothe London Games for the 10,000 meters. ‘‘It was a tough race,’’ Kiprop said through an interpreter,with the Kenyan flag draped over his shoulders. ‘‘I’ve been preparing for it. Iamthe world half-marathon champion, and now to be representing my country in the Olympics is the most glorious thing.’’ Pistorius fails again in bid to qualify for Games ATHLETICS THE ASSOCIATED PRESS EUGENE, OREGON Oscar Pistorius istrying to become the first double-amputee to run in the Olympics this summer inLondon, but chances are dwindling for the South African. Pistorius ranthe 400 meters at the Prefontaine Classic onSaturday in 46.86 seconds, well below the Olympic ‘‘A’’ standard of45.30. Hethinks he needs to reach that mark in an international meet before June 30 for the South African athletics federation to consider him for theOlympics. Pistorius finished last inastrong field at the Diamond League event. American LaShawn Merritt wonit in 44.91. ‘‘I’m disappointed inmyselfabit, it wasn’t the race I wanted to have,’’ Pistorius said. ‘‘Unfortunately, it’s one of thosethings.’’ Knownasthe ‘‘Blade Runner’’ for his carbon-fiber prosthetic legs, Pistorius ran the ‘‘A’’ standard earlier this season, finishing in 45.20 in Pretoria in March. His besttimewas last July in Italy,when he ran the 400 inapersonal-best 45.07. He said he had two more chances to reach the standard, at the Diamond League’s Adidas Grand Prix next weekend in New York, and theAfrican Championships in June. ‘‘I’m going to have to put my head down and seriously focus on those,’’ he said. ‘‘It’s frustrating, really, because I know I’m inthe shape todo it. It’s ultimately oneof thosethings, I’ve just got to get back into it.’’ FAST, BUT NOT A RECORD Liu Xiang was giddy over his victory and even more gleefulafterseeing his time. The 110-meter hurdler from China bounded around the track with anunbridled exuberance after holding off a star-studded field at the Prefontaine Classic on Saturday, finishing in a time of12.87 seconds. That time would have tied the world record, but itwas wind-aided by a slight margin. Sotheworld mark belonging to Dayron Robles of Cuba remains safe — fornow. SCOREBOARD BASEBALL Major Leagues AMERICAN LEAGUE East Division W L Pct GB Baltimore 30 23 .566 — Tampa Bay 30 23 .566 — New York 28 24 .538 1½ Boston 28 25 .528 2 Toronto 27 26 .509 3 Central Division W L Pct GB Chicago 30 23 .566 — Cleveland 28 24 .538 1½ Detroit 25 28 .472 5 Kansas City 22 29 .431 7 Minnesota 19 33 .365 10½ West Division W L Pct GB Texas 31 22 .585 — Los Angeles 28 26 .519 3½ Seattle 24 31 .436 8 Oakland 23 30 .434 8 NATIONAL LEAGUE East Division W L Pct GB Washington 30 21 .588 — Miami 30 23 .566 1 New York 30 23 .566 1 Atlanta 28 25 .528 3 Philadelphia 28 26 .519 3½ Central Division W L Pct GB Cincinnati 30 22 .577 — St. Louis 27 26 .509 3½ Pittsburgh 26 26 .500 4 Milwaukee 24 29 .453 6½ Houston 22 31 .415 8½ Chicago 18 34 .346 12 West Division W L Pct GB Los Angeles 33 20 .623 — San Francisco 29 24 .547 4 Arizona 24 29 .453 9 Colorado 22 30 .423 10½ San Diego 18 36 .333 15½ (AP) TENNIS French Open Saturday Men’s Singles David Ferrer (6), Spain, def. Mikhail Youzhny (27), Russia, 6-0, 6-2, 6-2. Nicolas Almagro (12), Spain, def. Leonardo Mayer, Argentina, 6- 4, 6-1, 6-2. Janko Tipsarevic (8), Serbia, def. Julien Benneteau (29), France, 6-3, 7-5, 6-4. Andy Murray (4), Britain, def. Santiago Giraldo, Colombia, 6-3, 6-4, 6-4. Richard Gasquet (17), France, def. Tommy Haas, Germany, 6-7 (3), 6-3, 6-0, 6-0. Rafael Nadal (2), Spain, def. Eduardo Schwank, Argentina, 6-1, 6-3, 6-4. Juan Monaco (13), Spain, def. Milos Raonic (19), Canada, 6-7 (5), 6-3, 6-7 (5), 6-3, 6-4. Marcel Granollers (20), Spain, def. Paul-Henri Mathieu, France, 6-4, 6-4, 1-6, 4-6, 6-1. Women’s Singles Petra Kvitova (4), Czech Republic, def. Nina Bratchikova, Russia, 6-2, 4-6, 6-1. Yaroslava Shvedova, Kazakhstan, def. Carla Suarez Navarro, Spain, 6-4, 7-5. Varvara Lepchenko, United States, def. Francesca Schiavone (14), Italy, 3-6, 6-3, 8-6. Li Na (7), China, def. Christina McHale, United States, 3-6, 6-2, 6-1. Klara Zakopalova, Czech Republic, def. Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova (22), Russia, 6-3, 7-5. Maria Sharapova (2), Russia, def. Peng Shuai (28), China, 6-1, 6-2. Kaia Kanepi (23), Estonia, def. Caroline Wozniacki (9), Denmark, 6-1, 6-7 (3), 6-3. Arantxa Rus, Netherlands, def. Julie Goerges (25), Germany, 7-6 (5), 2-6, 6-2. (AP) BASKETBALL N.B.A. playoffs Conference finals Saturday Oklahoma City 109, San Antonio 103, series tied 2-2 (AP) ICE HOCKEY N.H.L. playoffs Stanley Cup finals Saturday Los Angeles 2, New Jersey 1, OT,LosAngeles leads series 2-0 (AP) NON SEQUITUR PEANUTS DOONESBURY GARFIELD CALVIN AND HOBBES SUDOKU No. 0406 4 7 6 2 3 9 5 3 9 8 8 6 9 5 7 5 7 1 8 2 4 Created by Peter Ritmeester/Presented by Will Shortz (c) PZZL.com Distributed by The New York Times syndicate WIZARD of ID DILBERT Fill the grid so that Solution No. 0206 every row, column 3 8 9 7 2 5 6 1 4 3x3 box and shaded 3x3 box 1 6 2 3 4 9 8 5 7 contains each 5 7 4 1 8 6 2 3 9 of the numbers 2 9 8 5 6 1 7 4 3 1 to 9 exactly once. 6 3 1 4 7 8 9 2 5 4 5 7 9 3 2 1 8 6 7 1 3 8 9 4 5 6 2 8 4 6 2 5 7 3 9 1 9 2 5 6 1 3 4 7 8 BRIDGE | Frank Stewart Cy the Cynic continues to battle his South Dealer weight. Both sides vulnerable ‘‘When Istep on mybathroom scale, I suck in my stomach,’’ Cy told me. North ‘‘Thatwon’t affect your weight.’’ ä QJ10 8 ‘‘True,’’ the Cynic shrugged, ‘‘but it lets × Q7543 me see the numbers on the scale.’’ μ 6 Cy could shed some pounds if he exercised — but he won’t even exercise re- å 1 042 West East straint. As today’s declarer, he took the ä 52 ä 4 3 aceofhearts, ledatrump to dummy and × 9 8 × KJ1062 returned a diamond to his king. West μ AQ1075 μ J98 won and led his lasttrump. å KJ63 å Q 8 7 Trouble Dummy won and East followed, but Cy South was in trouble. He ruffedaheart, ruffeda ä AK976 diamond, ruffedaheart and ruffed a diamond with dummy’s last trump, but å A95 × A μ K43 2 sincethe king ofhearts hadn’t fallen, Cy had another diamond and two clubs to South West North East lose. Down one. 1ä Pass 2ä Pass Cy’s play was weighted toward going 4ä All Pass down. Cy must lead a diamond from his hand at Trick Two. If the defense shifts to Opening lead - × 9 a trump, Cy wins, cashes the aceofclubs and crossruffs. He scores 10tricks: five trumps in his hand, three ruffsindummy, a heart andaclub. Daily Question: You hold: ä 52;× 9 8; μ AQ1075;å KJ63. Your partner opens one spade, you respond two diamonds, he bids two hearts and you try 2NT.Partnernext bids three hearts.What do you say? Answer: Partner has minimum values with10ormore major-suit cards.Youshould have no chance at 3NT; be disciplined and return to three spades. By theway, in the ‘‘two-over-one-game-force’’ style many pairs use, this hand wouldn’t qualify foraresponseof two diamonds. Tribune Media Services CROSSWORD | Edited by Will Shortz 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 Across 34 Younger brother of 60 Number in an octet 1 Stick in one’s ___ Cain and Abel 64 Many a line on a 17 18 19 5 Czech capital 35 Lowest point flight route map 11 Banned organic 39 Country on the 65 Milky Way bars and 20 21 22 compound, for short south side of Mount others Everest 68 With 53-Down, 23 24 25 26 14 TV’s warrior princess 42 Chinese philosopher a coffee-flavored 15 Compassionate ___-tzu liqueur 27 28 29 30 31 32 16 Kind of baseball or 43 Lopez with the 69 Some marbles battery 1963 hit “If I Had a 70 Book before 33 34 35 36 37 38 17 A classic beauty Hammer” Nehemiah who is not all there 39 40 41 42 43 44 Spanish artist 71 Floppy rabbit 19 Satellite-based El ___ feature 44 45 46 47 navigation aid, in 45 Colored part of the 72 Refuses to brief eye acknowledge 48 49 50 51 20 That is, in Latin 47 Lead-in to maniac 73 River across the 21 Plains tribe or surfing French/German 52 53 54 55 border 22 Wrap worn in India 48 1960s-’70s Ford 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 23 Broadcast Company model Down 25 Mini-hospital 52 Microscopic blob 1 116, in ancient 64 65 66 67 27 Booster of the 55 West Coast travel Rome Apollo space hub, informally 68 69 70 2 Clarinet or sax program 56 “Largemouth” fish 3 Actress Hathaway 33 Frigid 57 By way of 71 72 73 4 Wisconsin city Solution to June 1 puzzle 5 What an M.A. might PUZZLE BY JOHN R. O’BRIEN THE NEW YORK TIMES go on to earn E S T E S M S D O S 6 Regret 26 Period after Shrove 37 Playwright William 53 See 68-Across M E A G E R P O M E L O 7 Bullets, informally Tuesday B R O O D E R C A L I B E R 38 Hilarious one 54 ___ the Grouch A G I T A T O O V E R E A T 8 Walk or trot 27 Be in a 32-Down, 40 High points 58 Modern Persia Y E S I T I S M A S K E R S 9 Open with a key e.g. 41 Richard ___, 59 Italian wine city I T S E L E M E N T A R Y 10 Fairness-in-hiring 28 Taiwan-based Clarence Darrow 61 Egyptian pyramid S T R E S S T E S T S inits. computer giant defendant A T O city L I T E R A T U R E S 11 Polytheistic 29 Genre 46 Word part: Abbr. 62 Wife of Zeus F U T U R E R E S U L T S 12 Blue Grotto’s island 30 Archaeologist’s find 49 Wreak havoc on 63 Old Russian despot T I N S T A R R U N L A P S 13 Fundamental 31 Japanese port 50 Battle of Normandy R E C H O S E M A N A T E E 65 “What, me worry?” U S H E R E D S L I M I N G 18 Use a swizzle stick 32 Group in church city magazine S T E R E S S E A N C E 22 Indian instrument robes 51 Rust and lime 66 So-so grade T A S E D R E G E R 24 E.R. workers 36 “Carpe ___” 52 Diminish 67 Donkey
Culture design books The ups and downs of lowercase logos LONDON Italian design group plays with typography for an influential art show BY ALICE RAWSTHORN How many corporate symbols, logos, brand identities or whatever else you want to call them are you exposed to in a typical day? Bearing in mind that ‘‘exposed to’’ does not necessarily mean that you will notice any of those images, let alone remember them, just think of how many symbols you see each time you open the fridge, walk along a street, read a newspaper, enter a store or go online. A couple of hundred? Definitely. Maybe even a few thousand. You do not need to be a branding expert to work out that with so many images fighting for our attention it has become increasingly difficult for any of them to stand out, which made it all the more surprising when I recently found myself noticing an unusually distinctive new symbol. It is the logo, or series of logos, developed by the Italian design group Leftloft for the 13th edition of Documenta, which opens Saturday in the German city of Kassel, where it is held every three years as one of the world’s biggest and most influential art exhibitions. What makes the new identity so noticeable is not the decision to design it in several different typefaces, which has become a popular strategy in communications design, but choosing to spell dOCUMENTA like that, with a lowercase ‘‘d’’ followed by capital letters. Usually I dislike such typographic tricks, because they look silly and gimmicky. Take the brand names of the electric cars Ford’s Th!nk and Mitsubishi’s I MiEV. If they are distinctive and memorable, it is not for the right reasons, but because they are irritatingly tricky to pronounce and to write, whereas reversing the usual order of letter cases in dOC- UMENTA (13) looks rather intriguing. One reason why it seems so striking is its context within modern German culture. Documenta dates back to 1955 when Arnold Bode, an artist and teacher, organized an exhibition of modern international art in his home town, Kassel, as part of the effort to repair the damage caused by World War II by fostering empathy and understanding between different nations. The first Documenta was so successful that the exhibition became a regular event, like another postwar cultural initiative, albeit one intended for a very different audience, the Eurovision Song Contest. Each subsequent edition of Documenta has commissioned its own visual identity, most of which have conformed to the typographic style of solely using lowercase letters, which originated at the Bauhaus, the early 20th-century German art and design school. The catalyst for the Bauhaus’s love of lowercase type was the charismatic Hungarian artist and designer, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, who joined the school in 1923 and swiftly became one of its most LEFTLOFT (ABOVE); NILS KLINGER (RIGHT); DACS 2012 Clockwise from left: A poster for the dOCUMENTA (13) show, the exhibition hall in Kassel, Germany, and the cover of a 1928 edition of bauhaus magazine, designed by Herbert Bayer, who developed the ‘‘universal lettering system,’’ a set of characters in a clear, ascetic modern style. inspiring teachers by encouraging his students to challenge artistic convention and to experiment with the thenemerging media of photography and film. Abandoning capitals, which were associated with power, authority and tradition, especially in Germany, where every noun begins with one, seemed suitably subversive. One Bauhaus student-turned-teacher, Herbert Bayer, developed the ‘‘universal lettering system,’’ a set of characters in a clear, ascetic modern style. All of the letters were lower case as were those in an alphabet devised by another student who went on to teach at the school, the artist Josef Albers. The Bauhaus continued to use capitals in some instances, including the sign outside its building in the city of Dessau. But by the late 1920s, the school’s designers often chose exclusively lowercase lettering for its publications and invitations to performances and parties, as you can see in the wonderful ‘‘Bauhaus: Art as Life’’ exhibition, running through Aug. 12 at the Barbican Art Gallery in London. The democratic spirit of lower case script, free from hierarchical trappings, had an obvious appeal to the avantgarde, which adopted it as an emblem. As Bayer observed, modern life was too fast and too exciting to waste valuable time on stuffy formalities, such as differentiating between different categories of letters. Some businesses subsequently incorporated lowercase names in corporate identities, like the American designer Paul Rand’s 1962 circular logo for ABC Television, and his Italian counterpart Giulio Cittato’s 1971 motif for the Coin retail group, but mostly they were associated with cultural initiatives like Documenta. In the 1990s, however, lower case script suddenly proliferated. The trigger was the Internet, which, as the decade went on, became synonymous with progress and ingenuity. Regardless of how tech-savvy — or otherwise — a company was, it could, at least, look as if it was destined for a dazzling future in the digital era by sporting a logo in the lowercase lettering used in Web site and e-mail addresses. No wonder that when the giant British oil group BP adopted a brightly colored sunflower logo designed by Landor Associates in 2001 to try to persuade the world to forget about all of the television news footage of dead birds trapped in devastating oil spills, and to think of it as a responsible, empathic company, it plumped for lower case initials. Other businesses did the same, often for similar reasons. No longer dashingly radical, lower case lettering swiftly became a corporate cliché, which is one reason Documenta decided to do something different in its latest visual identity. Leftloft’s solution was to define a set of rules for the logo of the new edition, which would allow it to appear in any font, including hand-written ones, as long as it was printed in black and the name began with a lowercase ‘‘d’’ followed by capitals and the number ‘‘13’’ in parentheses. As a result, every manifestation of dOCUMENTA (13) can be given its own emblem, whether it is a Web site, a book, the principal exhibition in the Fridericianum museum in Kassel, or one of the smaller satellite projects in Kabul and Cairo. And each of those symbols will be instantly recognizable as belonging to dOCUMENTA (13), unless, of course, the same typographic ploy suddenly appears in lots of other places too. ONLINE: MORE ON DESIGN Past columns and reviews from Alice Rawsthorn. global.nytimes.com/arts Deconstructing 2 rock legends Who Is That Man? In Search of the Real Bob Dylan. By David Dalton. 383 pages. Hyperion, $26.99; Omnibus Press, £19.95. Bruce Springsteen and the Promise of Rock ’n’ Roll. By Marc Dolan. 512 pages. W.W. Norton & Company, $29.95; £19.99. BY ROBIN FINN Their mythologies precede them: Bob Dylan, surreally hip and seemingly rootless. Bruce Springsteen, the Everyman with deep roots. One the antisocial poet and precocious patriarch of the post-Guthrie social protest anthem, the other a BOOK REVIEW record company designee for the future of rock ’n’ roll post-Elvis; many thought he might even, gasp, be the next Dylan. Both grappled with the early hype that destined them for American icon-dom. Each outwitted the hype; each admired the other. When the unwilling folkie chameleon was inducted into rock’s Hall of Fame in 1988, it was the earnest rocker from New Jersey who gave the speech. The times they aren’t a-changin’ so radically that Mr. Dylan, at 71 a grandiose granddad, and Mr. Springsteen, at 62 a gym-chiseled civic paragon, have worn out their welcome with biographical prospectors bent on extrapolating shards of cultural and socioeconomic relevance from the recesses of their respective oeuvres. So, greetings from the genre of fusion biography, where biographers without a direct pipeline to the focus of the investigation delve into a rock legend with connect-the-dots fervor driven by a personal agenda. David Dalton’s is to make lucid the chronic mutability of Mr. Dylan’s persona and musicianship by alternately insinuating himself into, and fantasizing about, the goings-on in his subject’s elastic and evasive mind. Unapologetic about his reverence for Mr. Dylan, Mr. Dalton brings his idol to earth with a string of zingers like: ‘‘Dylan played harmonica obnoxiously’’; ‘‘Everyone turns into a parody of themselves in the end; it’s just that with Dylan there are so many selves out there.’’ For Marc Dolan, a professor at John Jay College and the City University of New York, the task is more academic and humor harder to come by. This book endeavors to get to the heart of its subject by viewing Mr. Springsteen through the economic, social, political, religious and family turmoil that formed a musician who found out early on how to make his guitar talk but spent painful decades refining what he needed to make it say. His creative evolution and endurance TONY DEJAK/THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen at a benefit for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995. as a populist American rock ’n’ roll hero is, Mr. Dolan says, ‘‘a slantwise way of telling the history of our times, how we have come together and divided over the last half-century, how we have changed what we think of ourselves as a people.’’ Politics does not loom as large an informer of Mr. Springsteen’s social conscience as racially motivated social unrest. The professor in Mr. Dolan provides mini history lessons on the Rodney King debacle that left Los Angeles in flames (and left Mr. Springsteen unnerved) and the shooting of Amadou Diallo in New York City that provoked Mr. Springsteen’s incendiary ‘‘American Skin.’’ Bruce, the future of Western civilization may depend on you, and Mr. Dolan doesn’t seem to mind; he notes that even Barack Obama jokingly remarked to his wife, Michelle, at a campaign event that if he couldn’t be Bruce Springsteen, the next best thing was to become president. And there is another reason they call him ‘‘the Boss.’’ Just ask the E Street Band how many times Mr. Springsteen doled out pink slips in the glory days (Mr. Dolan zeros in on the band’s personnel issues and Mr. Springsteen’s sporadic need to go it alone). But they’re still performing ‘‘Born in the U.S.A.’’ As Mr. Dolan suggests, because he is a poet of inclusion, Mr. Springsteen will always have an audience. And to a performer, that guarantees relevance. On to Mr. Dylan, who just collected a Presidential Medal of Freedom from Mr. Obama, the nation’s highest civilian honor. Deconstructing the fabrications of a serial self-mythologizer is an arguably fraught enterprise. That goes double if, like Mr. Dalton, you are quick to confess that the man in the mirror (i.e. yourself, the veteran author of more than a dozen celebrity biographies) happens to idolize the genius genie he is trying not so much to yank from the bottle as to transfer into a transparent container. Or maybe this is Mr. Dalton’s atonement for acting as the enabler behind Steven Tyler’s best-selling ‘‘Does the Noise in My Head Bother You?’’ If we heard the noise, too, it would. In ‘‘Who Is That Man?,’’ Mr. Dalton wants to inveigle Mr. Dylan into removing the shades and cowboy hat. He encourages him to take ownership even of the bittersweet message of ‘‘Blowin’ in the Wind,’’ though he understands Mr. Dylan’s irritation with Peter, Paul and Mary for morphing it into a sugarcoated pop hit, a hit, Mr. Dalton says, that made Mr. Dylan his first million. But if Bob wouldn’t knuckle under and perform his famous protest song for Pope John Paul II in Bologna in 1998 (it’s perversely consistent that the same troubadour who walked off ‘‘The Ed Sullivan Show’’ in 1963 had the nerve to dis a request from a pope), the odds aren’t good that he’s going to allow a biographer microscopic access to his, uh, brain waves. So Mr. Dalton goes there without permission. Becausehecopstothefactthathe’s not going to succeed, his attempts at exposing, debunking and celebrating the essence of Robert Zimmerman’s Dylanness, and vice versa, make for an intriguing, often amusing, vision quest. Mr. Dylan’s quirks, kinks and inscrutability are fascinating fodder for endless interpretations. Mr. Dalton is entitled to his, and they’re the opposite of dull. ONLINE: MORE ON BOOKS For podcasts, reviews and other news visit: global.nytimes.com/books
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