Someone sent me a scan of the interview and, while the stuff about transfiguration is just weird (as I have indicated in another post), there is much that is fairly straightforward.
There may even be some basis in what he calls "transfiguration" following a road accident (there is evidence of something like this, feeling like a different person, with other people who have suffered accidents) but he really does take it very far in this interview. And the fact that he just happened to have the book with him, the book from which he first drew this notion, indicates that it was a premeditated view that he came prepared to express. Dylan is a man of extremes. You just have to read some of his between-song statements from the stage during his "gospel" period to know this.
His views of fans and critics (in the context of accusations of plagiarism) are also very strongly expressed but, when he describes them as "woosies and pussies" (or is the other way round?), he is being hypocritcal - "pussies" and "woosies" are weak and ineffectual people, whereas it is clear, from the nature of his comments, that they have been very effective indeed in getting under his skin.
When, again in the context of plagiarism, he refers to his operating in the folk tradition and just following the exigencies of songwrting, I have a fair amount of sympathy for his views. If, on the other hand, he used this arguement to explain the same practice in respect of passages in CHRONICLES, then he is on considerably less firm ground.
