[Joe]

He's been doing that his whole career - I'm surprised this was so heavy handed though. T.S. Elliot, and themes from Emily #^&#^&#^&#^&inson poems, have been favorite appropriations over the years.
I think his brain is fried at this point. With the exception of Blood on the Tracks and Desire, since the motorcycle crash, most of his work has been uneven, to downright terrible. I don't think Modern Times compares to his best work, though the critics heaped on the praise.
You have to understand that he’s a ‘darling’ of the NYT. People whom they are loathe to criticize because it has come back to bite them ass so many times. These artists were ahead of their time and the critics were blind and it looked bad that the critics lacked the sophistication to pick up on it. Meryl Streep, Robert Deniro, Woody Allen, David Byrne, Jeff Koons, Debbie Harry, Patti Smith and a host of other prominent artists also hold darling status – it’s almost like they can do no wrong.
He lost about 10 years of what could have been great creativity, to alcoholism.
People who read tremendous amounts can sometimes inadvertently plagiarize - that's what happened to the historian Doris Kearns Goodwin about five years or so ago - and she was always meticulous about citing sources. It’s possible to get original ideas mixed up with ones you’ve read in the distant past. But in Dylan's case, he was often seen in NY Public Library reading original Civil War journals, so that was intentional to be sure.