Illustration: Getty Images, Courtesy of Sony

Speaking to the Times of London, legendary performer Bob Dylan waxed poetic about the president and his first book, Dreams From My Father:

He’s like a fictional character, but he’s real. First off, his mother was a Kansas girl. Never lived in Kansas though, but with deep roots. You know, like Kansas bloody Kansas. John Brown the insurrectionist. Jesse James and Quantrill. Bushwhackers, Guerillas. Wizard of Oz Kansas. I think Barack has Jefferson Davis back there in his ancestry someplace. And then his father. An African intellectual. Bantu, Masai, Griot type heritage - cattle raiders, lion killers. I mean it’s just so incongruous that these two people would meet and fall in love. You kind of get past that though. And then you’re into his story. Like an odyssey except in reverse.

Sounds lovely, right? Though if it's an odyssey in reverse, does that mean we're leaving home and returning to war? That doesn't seem very nice, actually.

Bob Dylan on Barack Obama, Ulysses Grant and American Civil War ghosts [Times UK]