Hats off to Jonathan Lethem for eliciting a brilliant monologue from Bob Dylan and arranging it sinuously in the pages of Rolling Stone. Two quotations jumped out at me. One is: "Let's face it, you're either serious about what you're doing or you're not serious about what you're doing. And you can't mix the two. And life is short." The other is: "More people have seen the Mona Lisa than ever listened to Michael Jackson. And only three people can see it at once. Talk about impact." Of course, every once in a while someone figures out how to broadcast the Mona Lisa on the radio. Next Wednesday I'll be doing another Dylan Night at KGB Bar, with Ben Hedin (editor of Studio A: The Bob Dylan Reader), Bob Levinson, Mary Lee Kortes, Robert Polito, and boss David Remnick. We will be discussing the new album Modern Times, which is playing on the stereo now, and sounding darkly fine.
