RAW on Bob Dylan

One more excerpt from the New Libertarian Notes interview, and then I won't write about it until I can post the whole interview. This is a follow-up after the interviewers ask about Wilson's favorite books, TV, shows and movies.

CRNLA: What do you think of M*A*S*H, the Freak Brothers, Bob Dylan?

RAW: I loved Altman's film of M*A*S*H but I can't stand the TV series. The Freak Brothers are funny, but I deplore the lifestyle it celebrates. Of course, Einstein and Michelangelo were sloppy, too, but only because they were too busy with real work to fix their attention on sartorial status games. Hippies generally aren't busy with anything except feeling sorry for themselves. Dylan seems to me a totally pernicious influence -- the nasal whine of death and masochism. Certainly, this would be a more cheerful world if there were no Dylan records in it. But Dylan and his audience mirror each other, and deserve each other; as Marx said, a morbid society creates its own morbid grave-diggers.

This is pretty amusing, but also something I didn't see coming; I would have thought RAW would see some merit in songs such as "Blowin' in the Wind," "A Hard Rain's A Gonna Fall," and "Subterranean Homesick Blues." Allen Ginsberg was a big fan of Dylan, and RAW was a big fan of Ginsberg.