Sam Shepard's "Rolling Thunder Logbook" is a particularly interesting literary genre, the rock-tour-as-mythic-quest narrative. It is interesting primarily because the Rolling Thunder tour in 1976 was interesting….

[Clearly], Mr. Shepard's book could have been more than interesting. The poets of the Beat Generation, early folkies like Mr. [Ramblin' Jack] Elliott, and the penetration of their strain of ambient bohemianism into the mainstream of American culture, with Bob Dylan in the vanguard, constituted a cultural revolution, if not quite a social one. The repercussions of this revolution have died down somewhat, but they are still very much with us.

Rolling Thunder was not simply a reflection of the natural alliances Bob Dylan and other younger rock and folk performers have made with certain of their elders. It was a conscious attempt to reconsider the roots of these alliances. The tour meandered through New England on a bus, playing for small...