Letham Assignment

Finding the original passage from David McNair’s and Jayson Whitehead’s article on Bob Dylan was as simple as a five second Google search and clicking the first link. Apart from making minor paraphrasing changes here and there to make the passage flow better in his paper, Lethem doesn’t really change the argument of the original or how it presents Bob Dylan as an artist. What Letham does change, however, is the way he uses the passage afterwards. While McNair and Whitehead uses the original as an exposition of who Bob Dylan is as an artist, Letham uses the passage to claim that Bob Dylan’s antics “might be said of all art” (212). His usage of the content in the passage is completely different and demonstrates that being original does not necessarily have to use original content; rather, it’s the way to use the content that matters. In fact, it could be said that it is necessary to recognize and absorb the quality content of others in order to build yourself and be “original”.