["Nashville Skyline" is Dylan's tribute to the game of country music.] The usual relationship between Dylan's words and his melodies is reversed. "Nashville Skyline" is primarily sound—country sound of several varieties. Most of the lyrics are pastiches of country-western and pop clichés ("I was cruel. / I treated her like a fool. / I threw it all away") whose function is to provide the proper setting for the music. In the past, Dylan has used country music as a vehicle for self-expression; in this album he subordinates self to genre. (pp. 157-58)

Dylan's mood of acceptance, his use of clichés in the attempt to fashion "generic" songs, his revived interest in his past were all evident on "John Wesley Harding," though here these concerns are treated more casually and playfully. (p. 161)

Dylan has always combined frankness about the power struggle between men and women with reticence about...