Two icons of song, one enhanced, one obscured

I've always loved Bob Dylan. There's nothing he could do that I wouldn't be interested in. I loved the genius of his songs, the rasp and whine of his voice, the way he reinvented himself in album after album. Another Bob, Bobby Darin, was off my radar. All I knew about him was that he was a finger-snapping hipster I associated with AM radio and "Mack the Knife." So when books about these two Bobs arrived, out of curiosity, I reached first for "Roman Candle: The Life of Bobby Darin," by David Evanier (Rodale, $24.95).

This biography percolates with cool. Darin's syncopated fizz, his swagger and charisma, all pop off the pages. But underneath all the bebop was a loudly ticking clock. Seriously ill from childhood with a bad heart, Darin knew he probably wouldn't live past 30. But instead of protecting himself from the dangers of life, he willfully threw himself into the fray. He grabbed at opportunity, determined to be famous by the time he was 25, because that might be all the time he had.

Darin's genius, like Dylan's, was to innovate. Darin took a Kurt Weill dirge about a vicious mobster, "Mack the Knife," and made it a sly, thrillingly joyful hit. "Beyond the Sea" was a dainty French ballad that he made swing. Constantly shape shifting, Darin moved from lounge act to nightclub performer who could hold his own alongside Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin. A political activist, Darin later reinvented himself into a folk singer with a new name: Bob Darin. He ripped off his toupee and exchanged his trademark tuxedo for denim, but when the audience didn't want to follow his lead, he put the tuxedo back on because "he didn't want to stand in line for medical treatment."

The book breathes with wonderful incidents. Darin sings Dylan's "Blowin' in the Wind" to RFK on an airplane. Tony Orlando is invited to Darin's house for dinner, and Orlando is so nervous he cries when he spills mashed potatoes all over his shirt. To make him feel better, Darin instantly smashes potatoes on his own shirt, and then gives Orlando a pep talk about what's important in life and what's just mashed potatoes.

Darin's relationships with women were complicated. When he found out his sister was really his mother, he never got over the fact that both women had lied to him. Still, he adored women and was sexually voracious. The brass ring was marrying America's sweetie pie, Sandra Dee. Dee was a frosted cupcake of a girl with a damaged center, a victim of sexual abuse who shrank from intimacy with Darin. An emotional basket case, Dee retreated into an alcoholic haze, while Darin stayed stubbornly loyal.

Evanier's compassion for Darin never wavers. He's written a book so charged with intimacy, so heartbreakingly ebullient with life, that you feel that any moment the pages are about to snap their fingers and break into song. Darin burns out, dying young because he forgot to take an antibiotic before going to the dentist, but like a Roman candle's, his light is dazzling and unforgettable.

I may be the only person on the planet unhappy with the Bob Dylan memoir, "Chronicles: Volume One" (Simon & Schuster, $24). Giving us a book as casual as a late-night kitchen conversation, Dylan here seems almost indifferent to story or audience response.

Dylan's role is raconteur, and though the stories are engaging, can you trust them? Or are you just hearing what Dylan wants you to hear? The book is maddening and frustrating, a zigzag path through a remarkable life. He skips over the juiciest parts, certainly. His motorcycle accident gets only a sentence. The breakup of his marriage to Sarah is missing. We hear only about the aftermath of his relationship with Joan Baez, when he's annoyed that she's pressuring him to do the protest songs that now bore him. Instead, "Chronicles" is like a series of snapshots, all carefully chosen to create just the effect Dylan wants. He's telling the story of Bob Dylan, not Robert Zimmerman, which is really the story I want to know.

Of course, Dylan's language can be brilliant. There's a real sense of what life must have been like in '60s New York City, smack dab in the heyday of the folk era. Dylan gives us vivid pictures of the smoky clubs, the gritty streets, the cheap apartments and intellectual all-nighters. And his descriptions of other talents startle and engage. He shares a hot dog with Tiny Tim. He listens to Roy Orbison and says Orbison's singing was so great that it made you "want to drive your car over a cliff." Best of all, Dylan lets us in on some of the details of his creative life. We see how he lets the ideas marinate before he puts pen to paper. All this made me hungry for more.

So at the end, do I feel I know Dylan better? Nope. Not unless you mean do I know the myth of Dylan better. Will I read Volume 2? Maybe. But the rollicking intensity of "Roman Candle" made me go out and buy my first Bobby Darin CD. And for me, a book that got me that passionate about someone I never cared about before is an experience as charged and exciting as listening to my first Bob Dylan album.

Caroline Leavitt's novel "Girls in Trouble" will appear in paperback in April. She can be reached at www.carolineleavitt.com.