This morning

Three readable stories in the New York Times: two critical profiles -- one on Matt Dillon, the other on Outkast -- and an exegesis on the question of faith as manifested in Bob Dylan's forthcoming Modern Times. Jon Pareles suggests that the vaporous apostasy of Time Out Of Mind and Love & Theft has finally started to crimp Dylan's songwriting ("lackadaisical" and "tentative" are just two of Pareles' adjectives).