A Whirlwind of Change, 1964-1971: Aural (the songs), thematic (the philosophical questions explored), resistance to interviewers, global fame, family life
Tarantula cannot be fully understood without a consideration of the many changs Dylan was going though in this time period.
This was a period of great experimentation, change, growth, and excitement, including going electric, a global tour, getting booed, and getting seriously burned out. This all literally came to a head when, on July 29, 1966, he was injured in a motorcycle accident near his home in Woodstock, New York. In Chronicles he doesn’t say much about the accident itself (and there is, apparently, no police report and no hospital admission) but he clearly states the tremendous pressure he was under and how the accident was a good reason to step aside from that pressure. He wrote “I had been in a motorcycle accident and I’d been hurt, but I recovered. Truth was that I wanted to get out of the rat race.” After the accident, he withdrew from performing and public life, though he was still writing and recording (projects include The Basement Tapes and John Wesley Harding both in 1967).
Back in 1963-1964, Dylan had been saying in interviews that he was going to branch out, maybe into play writing or movies, or maybe into books. Between the lines, one got the feeling that he had begun to feel that the song form was limited. There were rumors that he had begun writing a book (in 1964-1965. according to Clinton Heylin). However, he seems to have stopped working on the book mid- to late- 1966, although he may have carried proofs to correct during his 1966 tour. Thereafter, the project lay dormant—until Dylan finally (and seemingly without explanation) withdrew his objection to publication and so Tarantula was finally released by the Macmillon Company in 1971 (Dylan’s copywright for the published work was dated 1966). In the 5-6 years since Dylan stopped working on the book, several versions were circulating as unofficial bootlegs. The publisher’s preface for the book, entitled Here Lies Tarantula, gives a brief history (linked HERE).
In 1964 and 1965, other changes were afoot that explain Dylan’s on-again, off-again work on Tarantula. Dylan, the “quickly famous shy boy” as he was called in Tarantula’s preface, had in fact discovered that he could greatly expand the song form and the complexity of themes he was writing about, starting with Bringing It All Back Home (released March 22, 1965), followed just five months later by Highway 61 Revisited (August 30, 1965) and a year after that by Blonde on Blonde (June 29, 1966). The artistic and financial success of these albums, we can speculate, lessened Dylan’s desire to develop other writing projects. In a 1966 interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Corportation he had said "After writing that [Like A Rolling Stone] I wasn't interested in writing a novel, or a play... I wanted to write songs... I mean, nobody's ever really written songs [like that] before".  

FROM AN INTERVIEW WITH CHRISTOPHER RICKS, The Dylan Review Vol. 1.2, Winter 2019 (linked HERE):
Ricks: “Tarantula is evidence of things about Dylan. It’s less good than the songs for lots of reasons. But the letters in it are terrifically good. Everything about the butter sculptor, everything about the professor who says, “Don’t forget to bring your eraser.” All those things are very good. Anyway a lot of it is evidence. ‘April or so is a cruel month,’ is not quite the very the best thing that Dylan ever does with Eliot, but It’s a lovely thing to have done with Eliot—even if it’s not as good, as deep, as ‘Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot fighting in the captain’s tower.’ The great thing is the depth with which Eliot is apprehended. ‘April or so is a cruel month’ is witty—I wish I had thought of it myself”.

Witting

LINKS JUST FOR FUN!
Is Tarantula a representation of Dylan’s natural gift for rhymes, rhythms, and word play, and his a headfull of ideas? How about this: Bathe My Bird!
Can we hear songs in Tarantula? With Stumpzian we go 180 degrees in the opposite direction, making songs not only into poems, but into spoken conversation: try out a few:
She’s Your Lover Now, I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine, The Wicked Messenger, Leopardskin Pillbox Hat, On the Road Again, I and I, Positively 4th Street

There is an excellent audio version, released by Simon & Schuster Audio in 2019. Tarantula is read by actor Will Patton.

TARANTULA LINKS to explore!
John Bauldie’s The Chameleon Poet, our July 2025 book-of-the-month, was one inspiration for our October focus on Tarantula (quotes about Tarantula excerpted by Peter White from Bauldie’s book are linked HERE.)
Robert Christgau’s review of Tarantula in the New York Times (linked HERE).
A review of Tarantula by Ewan Gleadow (linked HERE)
An 2020 article by Sarah Hillenbrand Varela, Revisiting Bob Dylan’s Tarantula in a Rough and Rowdy Time (Inter]sections 23:79-91, linked HERE)
Excerpts from an August 1965 interview of Dylan by Nora Ephron and Susan Edmiston (compiled by Peter White HERE)
KQED San Francisco Press Conference, December 1965, during which Dylan is asked what his (unnamed) book is about (he answers “It’s about just all kinds of different things—rats, balloons”), as well as other Tarantula-relevant topics like the meaning of his songs and his growing fame (linked HERE).