Desire has about it the feel of a State of the Disunion message, sung, chanted and talked by a man with great power, if indirect, and greater integrity, certainly, than most of the people addressing us this year. When he hears from his partner in "Isis" that they will return from their odyssey to the North "by the fourth," and replies, that's the "best news I've ever heard"—then that suggests one attitude toward America. But when he sings, in "Black Diamond Bay," that "there's really nothing anyone can say" about the land's hard luck stories—that tells something different. Would-be patriotism and resigned cynicism are the oil and water of this record. (p. 23)

Desire grows more interesting exactly because of the way the parts have a will of their own, a recalcitrance to Dylan's will. If in his affectionate liner notes Allen Ginsberg calls "One More Cup...