Below is a great response to the Andrew Ferguson piece shared with me by a reader, Matt Powell, after he submitted it to The Weekly Standard.

Dear Mr. Ferguson,

Seeing as how you’ve decided to take an opportunity to review Mr. Dylan’s new Christmas record as an opportunity instead to dismiss his entire career, I feel I must respond. Surly the irony is not lost on you that dismissing an entire body of work, spanning almost a half-century, by pointing to a few clunkers is just as obsessively foolish as citing those very clunkers as the reason for the author’s genius. I wonder why it is so impossible for the obsessive Dylan fan (whom you fail to distinguish from other Dylan fans in your broad stroke generalization), and critics such as yourself, to acknowledge the simple truth that Mr. Dylan has written and performed a lot of great music, and some bad as well. After all, he is only human.

You describe his fans as Baby Huey dolls, citing 1970’s “Self Portrait” as the first instance when Mr. Dylan knocked them down, only to see them bounce back. What then do you make of the legions of folk-scene fans who did not bounce back after Mr. Dylan figuratively knocked them down with his performance at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965? Surely that was an affront to the loyal if ever there has been one. It gained him new fans of course, and new heights of commercial viability, to which his response was an all acoustic, sparse record containing not a single chorus. Maybe Mr. Dylan just happens to like a lot of different styles of music, as do I, and didn’t want to make the same records over and over. That is what true artists do, after all. Sometimes, they even make bad records. It isn’t all or nothing.

You also seem to misunderstand authorship, plagiarism, song-craft and the great American musical history and canon. All great writers steal and borrow. There is a line between putting your name on something that is not yours, and using a part of something else to create something new and original. Mr. Dylan does the latter. So did Shakespeare, who only wrote one play based on an original story (Measure For Measure, easily his least compelling and least interesting work). So did Robert Johnson, Elmore James and Muddy Waters; all great, innovative, original blues artists and writers who all, along with Mr. Dylan, are legally credited with writing the line “I roll and I tumble”. The truth is, the lyric predates them all. What about the blues, then? The same three chords in the same order with, quite often, the same lyrical phrases. Every great American blues musician, based on your theories of Mr. Dylan, would then be nothing more than a talentless charlatan. You dismiss out of hand Mr. Dylan’s writing methods because you do not understand how most, if not all, great writers work.

Speaking of plagiarism, it is ironic that the single musician you quoted to dismiss Mr. Dylan’s writing was Robbie Robertson – perhaps the most loathed man in rock and roll because he actually DID, according to band mates, put his name on songs that were written by other members of The Band.[1] That’s the equivalent to putting a jailhouse snitch on the stand who has been offered time off for his testimony. So much for judicious accuracy.

As to the quality of Mr. Dylan’s work, you do something here that is disingenuous and you know it; you take a phrase which sounds foolish out of context and offer that as proof that the whole of his canon is worthless, over-hyped drivel. You offer Cole Porter as an example of one of the greatest American songwriters. I agree with you; he is one of my favorites in addition to being one of the best lyricists in the whole of popular music. But one would never know it if, using your tactics, I offered this Cole Porter lyric: “due to the landscape gardeners gifted / Father Knickerbocker’s face is being lifted”. The greatest American songwriter? Really? See how easily this little game can be played.

Of course this was supposed to be a review of the Christmas record to which you offer, I think, the greatest summation I have read about it yet: “as if Dylan had chosen to lift the backing tracks from an Andy Williams Christmas special circa 1968.” That absolutely sums up the vibe of the record, and that was, clearly, the whole point. It is a tip of the hat to the great Christmas records of that era, album cover art and all. Mr. Dylan’s voice juxtaposed on top of those arrangements is just the kitsch icing on the cake. But most importantly, it isn’t meant to be taken too seriously. After all, it is for charity (you did know that Mr. Dylan is donating all of his proceeds to feed hungry families during the Christmas season, right? Because it wasn’t clear from your review that you did, what with the reference to Malibu ocean views and all).

Incidentally, I am a songwriter, so I appreciate the importance of protecting intellectual property. I am also a law student, so I really appreciate the importance of protecting intellectual property. I am also 32, so not a boomer (thankfully) and am a fan, but far from a Dylan apologist. If he does something I don’t like, I don’t pretend to like it. But I don’t use that to erroneously attack his entire artistic oeuvre. That is a fool’s errand.

Finally, in the last deliciously ironic twist, you close paraphrasing the man himself with a line, directed by you at his fans, but when written, was intended for critics who just didn’t get it.

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[1] Levon Helm, This Wheel’s on Fire: Levon Helm and the Story of the Band (Chicago Press, 2nd ed., 2000).

A different kind of response is over at BabyBlueOnline, where Mr. Ferguson’s piece is simply given a “dramatic reading” — one which I think captures its tone quite effectively.

Should there be other interesting responses out there which I haven’t seen, by all means let me know and I’ll be happy to link to them here.

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Posts which might be related to this one based on a mysterious algorithm:

• Bob Dylan talks to Bill Flanagan about Christmas In The Heart
• Rolling Stone
• On bootlegging and on critics: Bob Dylan talking to Douglas Brinkley in Rolling Stone