Bob Dylan in his 80s, celebrations and new books

(ANSA) - NEW YORK, MARCH 29 - Arthritis does not allow him to hold the guitar, so he plays on the stage leaning on the electric piano.

But even the voice, which David Bowie described as "sand and glue", is no longer what it once was, so much so that in the last album "Rough and Rowdy Ways" more than singing Bob Dylan recites the lines of his most recent songs.

However, if the 80th birthday is approaching - the date is May 24 - age does not stop the genius.

"He refuses to allow his career to be embalmed," wrote Paul Morley in one of the new books coming out in sight of the anniversary.

The legacy is huge and difficult to quantify: just last week the Nobel Prize for Literature turned to a judge to close a 7.5 million dollar case claimed by the widow of his collaborator Jacques Levy on the 300 million agreement collected in December with the sale of the music catalog to Universal Music.

    Meanwhile, the celebrations are preparing: Patti Smith, who in 2016 went to Stockholm to collect the Nobel Prize in her name - and stumbled, moved, while singing "A hard's rain a-gonna fall" - will celebrate Dylan on May 22 at the Spring Festival of the Kaatsbaan Cultural Park in the state of New York.

Also party in Duluth, where Dylan was born 80 ago.

At the center of the celebrations is also the publication of three new books and a re-edition: Morley's "You Lose Yourself You Reappear" in the bookstore in April, is a "personal response" to an enigmatic and transformative character, while the biographer Clinton Heylin will return to examine the years training in "TheDouble Life of Bob Dylan".

Sean Latham, professor at the University of Tulsa and head of the Institute for Bob Dylan Studies, created thanks to the purchase of over one hundred thousand Dylan memorabilia directly from the artist, will print "The World of Bob Dylan" on April 30 with an anthology of new academic essays, while New York Times reporter's 1986 "Bob Dylan: No Direction Home" and friend Robert Shelton will be updated and republished: the author is dead in the meantime.

   (HANDLE).