Where Dylan's often at
From Mr Mike Morrison Sir: Dot Wordsworth (Mind your language, 11 August) invites comments on Bob Dylan's use of 'where it's at'. Dylan is famously mercurial: the song 'Idiot Wind' has the lines 'even you, yesterday, had to ask me where it was at': he appears to mean `what's going on, what's the score'. In 'Like A Rolling Stone', he observes, 'ain't it hard to discover that/he wasn't really where it's at' (not the real McCoy. perhaps?); in Pos itively 4th Street', the recipient of his vitriol is told, 'you say you've lost your faith/but that's not where it's at', which seems to be saying simply 'that is not the case'. I'm not sure whether Dot's understanding of the (very American) idiom as 'fashionable' accords with Dylan's intentions.
Mike Morrison
London N20
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