Every Mind- and Well-Pollutin Word: Scott Warmuths Unscholarly & Goonish Attack on Prof Sean Wilentz Exposed

This piece Chronicles, er, Bob Dylan & America and Sean Wilentzs poisoning of Warmuths tumultuous well of strange names. Purloining from Warmuths Goon Talk web blog post of 16 April 2011:
Some purloined Jack London appears every couple of pages in Chronicles: Volume One, frequently paired with material from another writer. In his book Bob Dylan in America Sean Wilentz writes, "Discovering a few phrases lifted from Mark Twain and Jack London in a book so engaging, fluid, and generous as Chronicles would not have been sufficient grounds for daring to knock a national treasure." Wilentz has not examined the material closely enough, and his staunch and spirited defense is offtarget and based out of ignorance. It is one of the elements that will make his book date poorly. Chronicles: Volume One is a national treasure because it appears to be fluid and generous, but is actually written in code from cover to cover. It is a treasure map.

The cowboy and the cowpuncher, the dandy and the Pied Piper; yet another
instance of Dylan at play. It should also stand as a clear example of why one should never underestimate Dylan or take him at his word. The scope of his schemes is so vast that it is going to take years to unravel them, especially when writers like Wilentz insist on poisoning the well and selling their subject short.

Warmuth could not be more wrong; he has made a goon of himself. Why? Because Wilentzs book will stand the test of time poorly and so date very well indeed particularly, as far as Im concerned, as regards his treatment of Norman Raeben; neer the Yiddiotic Twain shall meet: Norman Raeben, Prof Sean Wilentz in America, and the Post-Blood on the Tracks Influence on Bob Dylan's Work. Perhaps I should change the title? Why will Wilentzs book in fact date well? Because, unlike in the close of the verse immediately preceding Sister, lemme tell ya in PRECIOUS ANGEL (1979), all is not well; it has been poisoned. (The scope of Dylans schemes is so vast Slow Train Coming left Michael thirsty.) And a part of this poison consists of a criminal critical omission by omission (like Greil Marcuss refusal to build a richer house with Wilfrid Mellers).
Sister, lemme tell you about a vision I saw You were drawing water for your husband, you were suffering under the law You were telling him about Buddha, you were telling him about Mohammed in the same breath You never mentioned one time the Man who came and died a criminals death

In his book, or index at least, in spite of having routinely plundered Warmuths blog on the muddiest superhighway in the universe (a most mysterious and revolutionary phrase I read somewhere) as public property, Prof Wilentz never mentioned one time the man who came and told em of the tumult of strange names (Shelley, The Revolt of Islam; back[-?]alley Sally is doing the American jump under the red sky, which is why bobdylan.com no longer

shows the release dates of albums) from Timrod onwards: a most criminal omission indeed, worthy of Sara Dylan (who knew too much to argue or to judge). As for on the web or in public, I am not so far aware; I cant spend my life reading www.expectingrain.com. Corrections welcome: all you have to do is join Scribd, two minutes of a job, then leave a comment. And now biographer Clinton Heylin is also, predictably, in on this act of never mentioning Scott Warmuth one time in his latest biography update in which he has to be in on referring, albeit obliquely, to Warmuths findings on the web; a characteristic Heylin-style omission, the like of which has positively got the goat of, amongst others, one Liz Thom(p?)son (reviewing one of his latest books). In fact with both books I went to the index expecting not to find Warmuth yet nevertheless find Timrod etc. I was not disappointed by my inevitable disappointment. Such is the deviousness of the Dylan world, the global village of Bobcats. If its not in the media or in a published book, its not happening. Scott Warmuth does not exist, which is why all the published authors read him most of them without letting on they are lurking, and the rest taking their time to do so. A most strange situation, which leaves the Dylan literati jockeying over a tumult of strange names. In Dylanology the well, and its poisoning, is a very complex theme, whose surface I only scratch in my piece: For Bob Dylan's Disk Jockey on 'Poisoning the Well': a Tumult of Strange Names Pre-Love And Theft cut-and-paste. Howbeit for a fuller, more sensitive and subtle, treatment I recommend Michael Grays S&D Man III (2000), where, although I cant currently find this in my copy of that latest edition (which could be down to what might have been down to me [S&D Man III p 215 fn] in the Biograph booklet; Michael is a big boy now), Michael tells us how, in the song SLOW TRAIN COMING, Dylan takes another opportunity to knock Sara. (In addition to what? Something Michael never mentioned one time; surely a [criminal] Zen oversight.) And it sure does bother me to see Scott Warmuth being turned into a puppet. On the muddiest superhighway in the universe. Contrary to Warmuths assertion, Wilentzs book will date well (in a Zen wheels-have-stopped kind of way) by poisoning it and becoming dated quickly. How be it Warmuth is so deceived?
My so-called friends have fallen under a spell They look me squarely in the eye and they say, All is well Can they imagine the darkness that will fall from on high When men will beg God to kill them and they wont be able to die? Sister, lemme tell you about a vision I saw

Scott:

You were drawing water for the Dylan literati, you were suffering under the Rollins bore You were telling em about Timrod, you were telling em about Ovid in the same breath But the Dylan literati never mentioned you by name one time before death. At least not in the index. All is well but only because its not: its being poisoned by criminal critical omission: of mention of the messenger of a tumult of strange names one time. (How much poison did they inhale? Under the red sky.) One of the most criminal critical omissions in the history of Dylanology is Dylan-Christ stopping by a Samaritan well, in momentary Dylanesque digression from Mary Alice Artes (the switch here being too fast and deft for the Dylan literati), to ask Zen Sara Dylan for a drink of poison idiot-wind water from the well. (Something Michael found too unpalatable to mention one time; time for a polite chastisement [p 244].) Why? Because: I, the one speaking to youI am he. So Dylan: Dylan-Christ. (I have hundreds of pages on this.) John 4 New International Version (NIV); not the Brit one (for obvious reasons):
Jesus Talks With a Samaritan Woman 1 Now Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that he was gaining and baptizing more disciples than John 2 although in fact it was not Jesus who baptized, but his disciples. 3 So he left Judea and went back once more to Galilee. 4 Now he had to go through Samaria. 5 So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6 Jacobs well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about noon. 7 When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, Will you give me a drink? 8 (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.) 9 The Samaritan woman said to him, You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink? (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.[a]) 10 Jesus answered her, If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water. 11 Sir, the woman said, you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? 12 Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his livestock? 13 Jesus answered, Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 14 but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.

15 The woman said to him, Sir, give me this water so that I wont get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water. 16 He told her, Go, call your husband and come back. 17 I have no husband, she replied. Jesus said to her, You are right when you say you have no husband. 18 The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true. 19 Sir, the woman said, I can see that you are a prophet. 20 Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem. 21 Woman, Jesus replied, believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22 You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. 24 God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth. 25 The woman said, I know that Messiah (called Christ) is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us. 26 Then Jesus declared, I, the one speaking to youI am he.

Go call your husband: Hans Lownds. Dont wanna marry nobody if theyre already married: part of Slow Train Comings code in the lyrics a term Dylan used of the influence he attributed to Norman Raeben in the Rolling Stone interview with Jonathan Cott, published 16 November 1978. It didnt end with Blood on the Tracks. While Sara may only have been married once previously, Dylan, in addressing her as the Samaritan woman at the well, could have been singing, Tellin em about Buddha . But that is a Samaritan digression to exhaust you so you would need a drink of DylanChrists living water poisoned by Zen. Je est un autre. Go, call your husband: Dylan-Christ, and give Him, from whom flow streams of living water, a drink of poison Zen. Those published writers who mention Warmuths findings but not him? Watchwords of a single woe: P B Shelley in The Revolt of Islam:
XXX Thus they with trembling limbs and pallid lips Worshipped their own hearts' image, dim and vast, Scared by the shade wherewith they would eclipse The light of other minds ; troubled they passed From the great Temple ;-fiercely still and fast The arrows of the plague among them fell,

And they on one another gazed aghast, And through the hosts contention wild befell, As each of his own god the wondrous works did tell. XXXI And Oromaze, Joshua, and Mahomet, Moses and Buddh, Zerdusht, and Brahm, and Foh, A tumult of strange names, which never met Before, as watchwords of a single woe, Arose ; each raging votary 'gan to throw Aloft his armd hands, and each did howl 'Our God alone is God!--and slaughter now Would have gone forth, when from beneath a cowl A voice came forth, which pierced like ice through every soul.

PRECIOUS ANGEL:
Sister, lemme tell you about a vision I saw You were drawing water for your husband, you were suffering under the law You were telling him about Buddha, you were telling him about Mohammed in the same breath You never mentioned one time the Man who came and died a criminals death

(Sara Dylan the shamanic Christ-snubber.) Intertextuality on the muddiest superhighway in the universe. As for Heylins criminal omission by commission, one of them, see: Clinton Heylin's Dylan-Salvation Myth-Hoax of a 1978 Tucson Arizona HotelRoom Jesus Epiphany (Exposed and Refuted) Paul Kirkman June 2011