The LATEST Dylan plagiarism panic

My friend John, from his perch atop the uTopian TurtleTop, has already weighed in on the sturm and drang over the revelation that some lyrics on Dylan's latest album are strikingly close to lines penned by an obscure Confederate poet. And I can't help but think, "Am I watching a rerun?" Three years ago, precisely the same hoopla was generated by the discovery that significant snippets of Dylan's cannily titled "Love and Theft" (nudge! wink!) were cribbed from a similarly obscure Japanese novel.

John does a great job of summarizing what Suzanne Vega writes in a New York Times Op-Ed piece as follows:

Suzanne Vega got it right in this terrific op-ed in Sunday’s “New York Times”: stealing lines is not part of the “folk process,” but there’s nothing wrong with it as long as you acknowledge what you’re doing, which Dylan will never do, because, as Vega says, he’s never pretended to be a nice guy. Explaining things is bad for mystique, and Dylan has always been about maintaining mystique.

Because John and Suzanne Vega are both accomplised composers with records under their belts (here's John's . . . record, not belt), I should probably defer to them on the point that John underscores here: appropriation = fine, lack of acknowledgement = not so much. BUT, I think that standard requires too much of composers (by which I mean writers and artists of all stripes) who may engage in the time-honored practice of leaving breadcrumb trails (sometimes interspersed with bits of red herring) that point toward their sources, and trusting the audience to sort it all out.

That's what Thornton Wilder did with "The Skin of Our Teeth" and he got savaged for it. Now it's Dylan's turn.

The bottom line for me is that Dylan's use of these snippets is NOT "plagiaristic" in that his use of the borrowed material is 1) limited; and 2) heavily transformative; and 3) (and perhaps most importantly) does not reflect a willful attempt to conceal the original author and thereby take credit for another's work.

GOOD University plagiarism policies have language that speaks to the "passing off" of another's work as one's own as the central element of plagiarism. Let's stipulate, up front, that Dylan is no dummy. Let's recognize, further, that he is probably aware that a) his lyrics are perhaps the most scrutinized of any English-language composer now living; and b) there is such a thing as Google.

So what, exactly, is Dylan doing when he embeds an easily-traced phrase or fourteen in the lyrics of his latest record?

It might be the case the Dylan is an unconscious magpie, who inadvertently coughs up a borrowed phrase from whatever he's reading as he sits down to write a song, but I think it far more likely that his use of the snippets is a knowing form of artistic play. While Dylan recasts the phrases he uses, the language is distinctive enough that those in the know will spot the borrowings. In the software industry, the term "easter egg" is used to describe a pleasant little surprise embedded within the architecture of a game or application. Clever users get a little something extra when they decode or uncover the location of the "easter egg." Dylan's borrowings are like easter eggs, in that they offer a direct answer to a question the Dylan routinely declined to answer (or at least answer seriously) in interviews, namely: "Who are your influences?"

While Dylan has always been cagey about describing his process and how he is influenced, in these plagiarism panics he offers a winking acknowledgment of his debts. And let's observe further, that by playing the game the way he plays it, Dylan cleverly shines a great big spotlight on the works he borrows from.

Today Amazon lists "Poems of Henry Timrod with Memoir and Portrait" at 12,360 on its sales chart. For purposes of comparison, Dylan's own "Freewheelin' Bob Dylan" -- a work of comparitively recent vintage -- is at 60,230. And I'm sure a month ago sales of the Timrod text were MUCH lower.

Amazon has cannily linked the Timrod book to "Modern Times" ina "Better Together" promotion. And here's the text of the sole Amazon review of Timrod's book:

(FIVE STARS) Don't look for Dylan here, look only for Timrod's poetry, September 17, 2006
Reviewer: Rex Chickeneater "Rex Chickeneater" (Armenia) - See all my reviews
After all the noise about Dylan's supposed borrowing from Timrod, I thought I'd give him a look. What one discovers is thoughtful and colorful poetry of a 19th century man. No more, no less. For what it is, it is first-rate. Thanks to the Dylan furor, I never would have discovered him.

Exactly.

I hope to hell Dylan sees fit to plagiarize my book once it's out.