Thanks for the responses to the Q & A with Ben Stein. Not to my enormous surprise, a number of readers have taken issue with some of Mr. Stein’s opinions on Dylan. As would be amply evidenced by previous writings of mine on this website, I too disagree with several of his observations. Were they made by a music critic writing in the New York Times or Rolling Stone, I might be inclined to tackle them at length. However, Ben Stein was in essence an invited guest on my website, and I was, after all, soliciting his opinions. And indeed I’m very grateful for his generousity in giving of his time and answering my questions. He’s a fan, he’s been one from the beginning, but he likes some periods better than others. For my part, I think that Dylan’s latter-day work is just great, and I think that his abilities as a live performer are still very considerable. I don’t think for a minute that he “hates his audiences.” And so on. But — although very much a novice when it comes to interviewing people — I certainly didn’t think it my role to argue at any length, but rather to hear what he thought. It would be nice to sit down with Ben Stein and a CD player and try to persuade him to enjoy Bob’s recent work more, but it’s not something one can get at during a brief telephone call.

In any case, this Q & A thing will be an ongoing series (God willing) and I think it will be interesting to see the answers that different people give to much the same questions.

One interesting opinion that Ben Stein expressed was that Dylan’s songs are “mostly about anger.” He identified Idiot Wind as his favorite song, and of-course we all know the anger or fury that inhabits that song. It’s also notable that at the end of the song the singer turns it back on himself. Whereas the preceding verses and choruses had cathartically singled out the singer’s former lover for her varied crimes and the hurts she had inflicted, the final verse and chorus dramatically concedes that the blame is utterly shared.

You’ll never know the hurt I suffered nor the pain I rise above,
And I’ll never know the same about you, your holiness or your kind of love,
And it makes me feel so sorry.

Idiot wind, blowing through the buttons of our coats,
Blowing through the letters that we wrote.
Idiot wind, blowing through the dust upon our shelves,
We’re idiots, babe.
It’s a wonder we can even feed ourselves.

Then, it’s not too difficult to come up with other songs where it could at least be argued that anger is the driving emotion. Like A Rolling Stone, Positively Fourth Street; you do the math. Yet, we can also come up with so many more songs, surely, where anger does not seem to be the dominant factor.

However, it does depend on how broadly you define anger, and to whom it is directed. In I Threw It All Away — a beautiful song of regret and squandered love — is the singer not angry, in a sense, at himself? In Property of Jesus, is the singer not angry at those who mock and despise someone trying to live a Christian life? And in so many songs, from Subterranean Homesick Blues to Stuck Inside of Mobile to The Groom’s Still Waiting At The Altar, to All Along The Watchtower and Jokerman, isn’t the singer in a sense angry at a world which is mad, where priorities are misplaced and where illusions hold so many enthralled?

It’s an interesting train of thought to pursue. It proves to me that even opinions I at first disagree with can be well worth considering.

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