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<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">When critics support your ideas, you hold them up as paragons of wisdom. When critics do not support your views, you dismiss them. You can't have it both ways.</font>


Oh, but you can... when Rolling Stone calls something 'literature', you may or may not take it with a grain of salt. When someone like the late John Gardner calls something 'literature', it's worth a higher level of consideration. Like I said, there are critics, and then there are critics.

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<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">This is rather condescending, isn't it? Perhaps you just don't "get" Dylan.</font>


Well, my remark (if it was condescending) was addressed to the impersonal "people who". Is your own condescension somehow more acceptable when it's directed personally, Monsieur Hypocrite?

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<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Oh, boy. I knew you would wade around until you stepped in a hole that would put you in over your head.</font>


And because you say it, that makes it so.

Now that you've declared yourself the winner, try not to hurt your shoulder in patting yourself on the back.

Just for the record, and a final note at that, in the realm of music composition, I consider the likes of Wagner, Bach, Mozart first tier.

At the next level, I'd place men like Webb, Bacharach, Ellington, Gershwin and their ilk; in a frame of broad-mindedness, maybe even Brian Wilson, Joe Jackson, the fellows from Steely Dan, that sort of thing.

Now under those standards I'd say "third-tier" was a fair place for Dylan, and no shame in taking a backseat to those others.

If you'd like to argue that he's the equal of any of the above, musical composition wise, well... I'm not going argue further.



[This message has been edited by RobertK (edited 10-22-2004).]