????鮑勃?迪倫能夠激勵人心嗎？作為資深迪倫粉絲，我的答案是確定無疑。上世紀80年代初期，我還是一名少年吉他迷。那時我就開始聽迪倫的音樂。當時我發現了《放任自流的鮑勃?迪倫》（The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan），這張專輯在我出生前兩年發行。我會坐在當時所念寄宿學校的宿舍里，在自己的先鋒卡帶機上著魔似地按倒帶和播放鍵，直到搞清楚迪倫在寫給前女友的甜苦情歌《不必多想，一切會好》（Don't Think Twice, It's All Right）中所使用的彈撥技巧。

????當時我的情感經歷還是一張白紙，所以這首歌為何會對我具有如此大的感染力，原因并不明顯。原因并不是因為迪倫是我那一代人的聲音。當然，前提是這個詞如果可以拿來描述我們這撥成長于里根時代、遠離政治的預科生的話。但是，跟大多數同齡人一樣，我夢想著有一天能夠在全世界留下自己的印記。迪倫在那方面似乎很有一套，讀一讀他在上世紀60年代以及之后的功績，無論是從誠摯的民謠歌手到憤怒的搖滾歌手，從暗諷的嬉皮士到和悅的講述者，還是從圣愚到褪色的藍調樂手，他看起來總能領先同代人一步。我十分欣賞他這一點。像所有偉大的演員一樣，迪倫在扮演每一個角色時都具有絕對的說服力，但接著他就又轉移到新的角色中去了。

????當然，迪倫的角色詮釋之所以有趣，只是因為他的音樂非常偉大。我從高中畢業已近30年，當我聽到極具超現實主義風格的《地下鄉愁藍調》（Subterranean Homesick Blues）、阿爾?庫珀在《像一塊滾石》（Like A Rolling Stone）開篇小節那高亢的電子琴前奏、迪倫在《弱者的歌謠》（Ballad of a Thin Man）中猛烈地詰問瓊斯先生、自己從《血之軌跡》（Blood on the Tracks）——插一句，這是我買過的分手主題專輯中最棒的一張——任意挑選一段進行彈奏，我仍然會感到興奮。

????在我最喜愛的一首歌曲中，迪倫寫道：“當救護車已經遠去，最后唯一剩下的聲響，只有灰姑娘，在那條荒涼小街上，默默地掃地。”我從未走過那《荒涼小街》（Desolation Row），而迪倫自己也沒有。但對我來說，它就跟《阿爾丁森林》（The Forest of Arden），或簡?奧斯汀筆下攝政時期英國的村落和莊園，或托馬斯?品欽筆下的占領區一樣真實。在我心目中，這些虛構的地方在某種程度上比我前往雜貨店時走過的街道更為真實，因為我更加關心前者。

????所以沒錯，迪倫確實激勵了我。但他的這種激勵是否是那種予人動力、勵志自助的激勵呢？作為一位文化人物，鮑勃?迪倫是否能夠跟霍雷肖?阿爾杰、戴爾?卡耐基、托尼?羅賓斯、史蒂芬?柯維以及奧普拉?溫弗瑞這些人相提并論？我們是否應該參照迪倫的生活和工作來尋找結交朋友、影響他人以及如何謀生這些問題的答案呢？

????是的，財經網站市場觀察（MarketWatch.com）的專欄作家喬恩?弗里德曼就是這種觀點。他在《忘記今天：鮑勃?迪倫在（再）發明創造、遠離懷疑論者以及發起個人革命上的天賦》（Forget About Today: Bob Dylan's Genius For (Re)Invention, Shunning the Naysayers, and Creating a Personal Revolution）一書中寫道：“我認為，憑著他那不可思議的天賦，迪倫能夠向人們提供人生教益。弗里德曼試圖通過活潑、簡短的章節來證明自己的觀點，這些章節從迪倫那載入史冊的漫長音樂生涯中截取特定的片段，并從中提取出道德教益。

????Is Bob Dylan inspiring? As a lifelong Dylan fan, my answer is yes, absolutely. I started listening to Dylan as a teenage guitar nerd in the early 1980s, when I discovered The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, an album released two years before my birth. I would sit in my dorm room at boarding school, obsessively hitting rewind-play on my Pioneer cassette deck until I figured out the picking pattern that Dylan used in "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right," his bittersweet sendoff to an ex-lover.

????I had zero romantic experience at the time, so it's not obvious why that particular song affected me so much. It's not like Dylan was the voice of my generation, if you can apply that portentous word to a bunch of politically disengaged preppy kids growing up in the Reagan era. But like most teenagers, I dreamed about one day putting my mark on the world. Dylan seemed cool that way: Reading about his exploits in the Sixties and later, I loved how he always seemed to stay at least one step ahead of his own generation, mutating from earnest folkie to angry rocker, from snide hipster to genial country raconteur, from holy fool to weathered bluesman. Like all great actors, he inhabited each new role with absolute conviction and then moved on to the next one.

????Dylan's role-playing is only interesting, of course, because his music is so strong. I've been out of high school for nearly 30 years, and I still get excited when I hear the breakneck surrealism of "Subterranean Homesick Blues", or when Al Kooper's towering organ riff kicks in during the opening bars of "Like A Rolling Stone," or when Dylan savages the hapless Mr. Jones in "Ballad of a Thin Man," or when I play anything off Blood on the Tracks, for my money the best breakup album of all time.

????In one of my favorite Dylan songs, he writes: "And the only sound that's left/After the ambulances go/Is Cinderella sweeping up/On Desolation Row." I've never walked down Desolation Row, and neither has Dylan. But it's just as real to me as the Forest of Arden, or the villages and manor houses of Jane Austen's Regency England, or Thomas Pynchon's Zone. In some ways, these fictional places seem more real than the physical streets that I navigate on my way to the grocery store, because I care about them more.

????So yeah, Dylan inspires me. But is he inspiring in a motivational, self-help-ish kind of way? As a cultural figure, does he belong on the same list as Horatio Alger, Dale Carnegie, Tony Robbins, Steven Covey, and Oprah Winfrey? Should we consult Dylan's life and work for answers on how to win friends, influence people, and locate our cheese?

????Yes, argues MarketWatch.com columnist Jon Friedman. "I think Dylan can teach people life lessons based on his mysterious genius," he writes on page one of Forget About Today: Bob Dylan's Genius For (Re)Invention, Shunning the Naysayers, and Creating a Personal Revolution.Friedman attempts to prove his case with short, zippy chapters that extract morals from particular episodes in Dylan's long and relentlessly chronicled career.