On Dylan

From a review of Martin Scorsese's new documentary, Bob Dylan - No Direction Home:

The only analogy that makes the slightest sense to me, is William Shakespeare. In the recent book, Will in the World , by Stephen Greenblatt, Greenblatt tries to explain how a rural boy from Lancashire, son of a drunken glove-maker, without a literary education or the sophistication of the court, could go to London and become the world's greatest playwright within a couple of years. Scorsese is doing the same thing for Dylan. Again, there's just no rational explanation. Shakespeare too, borrowed from the tradition plots, bits of text, lines that he heard in the street, other playwright's characters. He consumed the tradition and then took it to a higher place of integration, and that's what Bob Dylan did too.