Bob cites Dylan in Dialogue 11 as a young poet who "tapped into" the need to forge a new identity every day — to "die every day." He notes Dylan's 1985 remark that to understand the 1960s you should read Norman Mailer and Marshall McLuhan, which Bob reads as perceptive coming from someone "ravaged by a fame that threw him for a loop" and who later found McLuhan a guide to surviving it.
Across the dialogues
Cited as a pop figure who used McLuhan to make sense of the 60s and his own fame
Dylan said in 1985 that understanding the 1960s means reading Norman Mailer and McLuhan — perceptive, Bob notes, from a pop star ravaged by fame.
"he said in 1985, if you want to understand the 60s, you read Norman Mailer and Marshall McLuhan"
Dylan tapped, as a young poet, the frontier condition Bob describes — forging a new identity every day, dying every day.
"So you have to forge a new identity, or you're forced to by everybody else forging new identities every day. So you die every day."
Connections
Dylan named McLuhan (with Mailer) as a guide to understanding the 1960s — and, Bob suggests, to surviving fame.