album's title suggests a life's history under examination, and Biograph provides as comprehensive, revealing and fulfilling a text as a mere ten sides of Dylan will allow. It tells the story of a man's complex and inexhaustible romance with his mentors, influences and heroes: rustic minstrels (Woody Guthrie, Hank Williams); haunted blues singers (Robert Johnson, Bessie Smith); romantic, visionary and hipster poets (John Keats, William Blake, Dylan Thomas, Allen Ginsberg); roots rock cats and media superstars (the Reverend Richard Penniman, Elvis Presley).

Despite this plethora of sources -- acknowledged or interpreted -- the songs on this set give incontrovertible evidence of a continuing explosion of genius. He blew away all restrictions on content in popular songwriting. Even in the wake of the New Wave, any songwriter who veers into abstract, surrealistic or associative imagery owes a debt to Bob Dylan. In the lavish booklet that accompanies Biograph, Dylan makes a simple claim: "Tin Pan Alley is gone. I put an end to it." (Which isn't to say Bob's not capable of some old-school songwriting himself, as the "moon" --"spoon" rhymes in "I'll Be Your Baby Tonight" demonstrate.) Though his association with the protest movement of the Sixties produced the enduring anthems "Blowin' in the Wind" and "The Times They Are A-Changin'," the songs from this period skirted the obsolescence of topicality. Even the mournful outrage of "Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll" stands up more than twenty years later. Dylan's most important political act was to liberate radical perception and consciousness and put it into jukeboxes.

The assemblers of Biograph obviously knew Dylan's catalog extremely well, enjoyed access to the complete work and cared enough about the project to worry about its cumulative impact. Biograph -- with its intelligent and sensitive mix of greatest hits, best songs and fine rarities -- serves both hard-core Dylanphiles and neophytes. The album is thematically, albeit loosely, structured. The setting of the greatest hits -- "Lay Lady Lay," "Like a Rolling Stone," "Blowin' in the Wind," "The Times They Are A-Changin'" -- alongside less familiar songs creates a feeling of rediscovery. Since the album avoids chronological ordering, the listener is made less aware of Dylan's "reinventions" and is drawn instead to the incredible consistency of his vision and themes.