Plagiarism charge on Dylan blowin’ in the wind

Did Bob Dylan use, without attribution, several passages from a website that provides study guides for his Nobel Prize Lecture?

That’s the question blowing in the wind after Slate magazine reported that the unlikely Nobel laureate referenced or “cobbled together” several passages in his lecture from the entry on Moby Dick on the website SparkNotes.

The Slate report showed specific similarities in the language used by Dylan and SparkNotes, a website started by a group of Harvard students that has study guides on several subjects. This includes specific phrases, such as “lust for vengeance”, that feature in SparkNotes but not Herman Melville’s classic novel.

Dylan won the Nobel Prize for literature in October and would have forfeited the prize money of $900,000 if he didn’t deliver the lecture by June 10.

CONTINUED ON P 6 There’s a crazy prophet, Gabriel, on one of the vessels, and he predicts Ahab’s doom.

One of the ships... carries Gabriel, a crazed prophet who predicts doom.

Another ship’s captain – Captain Boomer – he lost an arm to Moby. But he tolerates that, and he’s happy to have survived. He can’t accept Ahab’s lust for vengeance.

…a whaling ship whose skipper, Captain Boomer, has lost an arm in an encounter with Moby Dick …. Boomer, happy simply to have survived his encounter, cannot understand Ahab’s lust for vengeance.