Hey, whatever became of Bob Dylan's memoirs?

Question

I know volume one was criticized very heavily for plagiarism. Did he decide not to write anymore?

And what do you think? Love and Theft also received plagiarism criticism. Is Dylan a plagiarist?

Answer 1

In an era where everything is about money, its difficult for many to understand how or why Dylan would appropriate someone else's words. It is actually a long-standing part of the folk process. Woody Guthrie did it, Pete Seeger did it, and thousands of un-named others in rural America, England, Ireland and Scotland did it. If they hadn't, we wouldn't have folk music. I never heard anything about plagiarism concerning the memoirs-seems like it would be hard to plagiarize your own life story. As far as Love and Theft, the author of the book (of which only 25,000 copies were printed) said he was "thrilled" that Dylan thought enough of his work to use it. Dylan is the greatest songwriter of the last hundred years (or more) and for every instance where he may have "borrowed" from someone, there are a thousand instances of someone else borrowing a line, a phrase, or an idea from him.