Bob Dylan, Nobel Prize in Literature, contradicts himself about his own lyrics, from one interview to the next, like a person with multiple personality.

In this excerpt from an interview published earlier today by someone who has interviewed Bob Dylan a number times over the years, he is described as having always been puzzlingly inconsistent.

At first, when the Nobel Prize was recently announced, Dylan had been inaccessible to the Nobel Prize committee, and one critic speculated that he was standing up for artistic independence. But in today’s interview:

“…when I ask about his Nobel, Dylan is all affability. Yes, he is planning to turn up to the awards ceremony in Stockholm. ‘Absolutely,’ he says. ‘If it’s at all possible…It’s hard to believe…amazing, incredible. Whoever dreams about something like that?’…

“If there is one thing I have learned about him over the years, and the several interviews he has granted me, it is that he always does the unexpected…In interviews over the years, the famously unpredictable Dylan has been by turns combative, amiable, taciturn, philosophical, charismatic, caustic and cryptic…fiercely private and frustratingly unknowable…

“He has never, of course, been one to explain his lyrics. ‘I’ll let other people decide what they are,’ he tells me. ‘The academics, they ought to know. I’m not really qualified. I don’t have any opinion.’

“On the associated question of whether those same lyrics can be considered poetry, Dylan has long delighted in publicly changing his mind. He is perfectly capable in one interview of saying that they can, and then the next time he grants a journalist an audience saying that they can’t” (1).

As I’ve said in many past posts, two cardinal clues to the possibility that a person has multiple personality are, 1. puzzling inconsistency, and 2. memory gaps. The above illustrates the first clue. But I don’t know whether he has a history of memory gaps or losing time.

It is also worth noting that "Bob Dylan" is a pseudonym. Search "pseudonyms."

1. Edna Gundersen (interviewer). “World exclusive: Bob Dylan - I’ll be at the Nobel Prize ceremony…if I can.” The Telegraph, 29 October 2016.