Jewish song writer/singer (in a fashion), Bob Dylan (Robert Zimmerman), received the Nobel, not Noble, Prize for Literature, with a storm of controversy, since he is regarded as a musician, not a writer. Critics wanted the prize to go to a Third World writer, some guy from India whose name is on the tip of my tongue.

Now there is another Dylan controversy: in his Nobel Prize lecture he said that the book Moby Dick “makes demands on you.” Oh, come now, it is not a very complex text compared to other works in the Western cannon. Anyway, so demanding was the text on poor Bob’s mind that he seems to have plagiarised sections from a student guide to the novel. Yes, not a fellow English lit professor in a peer reviewed journal, but a student guide, great for struggling students, but one would have expected a little more in a Nobel Prize lecture:

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In short, he ripped off stuff that if an undergraduate student did it, would have led to a failed essay. And, he walks away with the loot, to boot. So, you still doubt that Western civilization is not in free fall?

How did Mr Literature respond to this? Water off a duck’s back. Dylan has a long history of “borrowing” in his classic works:

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I seem to recall that in the early years, he even paned the Beatles music, and particularly disliked “Yesterday” (1965), saying: "If you go into the Library of Congress, you can find a lot better than that. There are millions of songs like 'Michelle' and 'Yesterday' written in Tin Pan Alley." He would now. The same can be said for his own songs. And, at least the dopey Beatles did not go out and defend the Hurricane:

It is only fitting that Bob entitled his 2001 album, Love and Theft:

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Here is my song for you Bob, with a double entendre on “blowin’”:

“Blowin’ in the Bin”

How many songs must a man steal

Before you can call him a seal?

How many seas must a pseudo-intellectual sail

Before his reputation will pale?

Yes,’n’ how many times must the critical canon balls fly

Before free speech is finally to die?

The answer my friend, is in “Marxist social praxis”

The answer is in “Marxist social praxis.”

(The phrase “Marxist social praxis,” was given by one of my commo uni. Lecturers in response to the famous Dylan song in a lecture I sat through back in the heady days of 1969. I am still working through PTSD caused by my education.)

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Recognizing and Surviving the Condition of Anarcho-Tyranny