In Chronicles Dylan writes about listening to Malcolm X on the radio in 1961, lecturing about the evils of pork, and them remembering Malcolm's words at Johnny Cash's house a decade later when Sarah Carter's son Joe asks him about eating pork. "It's funny how things stick with you" he writes.
A more likely scenario is that when Dylan was doing background research for Chronicles he came across an article regarding the Muslim movement in prison that ran in the March 31, 1961 issue of Time magazine and found a line that jumped out at him.
He also appears to have liked many of the other articles from the same issue, as he seems to have incorporated a slew of elements from them into Chronicles as well.
Dylan famously said, "I don't need Time magazine" in 1965. He may not need Time magazine, but it certainly appears that he found numerous things that he liked in Time magazine. Compare and contrast:
Chronicles, page 102: "I don't eat something that's one third rat, one third cat and one third dog. It just doesn't taste right." Time, Friday, Mar. 31, 1961 Races: Recruits Behind Bars "When pork appears on prison menus, Muslims disdain it.*" "— One of Elijah's more fanciful doctrines: the white man, especially the Jew, keeps the black man weakened by selling him the flesh of swine.
The pig contains 999 specific germs, is actually one-third cat, one-third rat and one-third dog." ================================ Chronicles, page 87: "They had turned Hanoi, the capital city, into the 'brothel-studded Paris of the orient.'...The press reported Hanoi was grubby and cheerless, that the people dressed in Chinese shapeless jackets" Time, Friday, Mar. 31, 1961 North Viet Nam: Poor Neighbor "Hanoi, long the brothel-studded 'Paris of the Orient,' is now grubby and cheerless, and the once glittering Street of Silk is deserted soon after sundown, reported TIME Correspondent James Wilde, one of the few Westerners to visit Hanoi in its six years of Red rule. Crowds flock to the 'people's stores'—but only to stare enviously at shoddy goods priced way out of reach of the average worker's 40-dong monthly salary...Dressed Chinese-style in shapeless jackets instead of the traditional silk tunic, women are almost indistinguishable from men." ==================================== Chronicles, page 88: "Some women wanted to be called 'a woman' when they reached twenty-one. Some sales girls, or women, didn't want to be referred to as 'salesladies.' In churches, too, things were shaking up. Some white ministers didn't want to be labeled 'the Reverend.' They wanted to be called just plain 'Reverend.'" Time, Friday, Mar. 31, 1961 The Press: The Reporter's Guide
"The Los Angeles Times, concluding that all women aren't ladies, ungallantly applies its conclusion: 'A salesgirl or a saleswoman is not a saleslady, and a washerwoman is not a washlady, so a scrubwoman cannot be a scrublady.'" "In the Memphis Commercial Appeal if a minister is white, he is 'the Rev.,' if Negro he is simply 'Rev.'" ======================================= Chronicles, page 88: "There'd be articles about things like new modern-day phobias, all with fancy Latin names, like fear of flowers, fear of the dark, of height, fear of crossing bridges, of snakes, fear of getting old, fear of clouds. Just any old thing could be frightening. My big fear was that my guitar would go out of tune." Time, Friday, Mar. 31, 1961 Medicine: A GLOSSARY OF PHOBIAS Fear of: achluophobia darkness aichmophobia pointed objects ailurophobia cats anthophobia flowers astrophobia stars ballistophobia missiles barophobia gravity cherophobia gaiety chionophobia snow chronophobia time climacophobia staircases dextrophobia objects on the right side of the body erythrophobia red gephyrophobia crossing bridges graphophobia writing hypengyophobia responsibilty kathisophobia sitting down levophobia objects on the left side of the body linonophobia string ophidiophobia snakes pantophobia everything phobophobia being afraid phonophobia one's own voice photophobia light phronemophobia thinking scopophobid being seen siderodromophobia railroad traveling sitophobia eating stasibasiphobia walking or standing thalassophobia the ocean vermiphobia infestation with worms ================================================ Chronicles, page 88: "Reputable psychiatrists were saying that some of these people who claimed to be so against nuclear testing are secular last judgment types — that if nuclear bombs are banned, it would deprive them of their highly comforting sense of doom."
Time, Friday, Mar. 31, 1961 The Anatomy of Angst
"For many Bomb worriers, it seems to be a true phobia, a kind of secular substitute for the Last Judgment, and a truly effective nuclear ban would undoubtedly deprive them of a highly comforting sense of doom." ============================================= Chronicles, pages 88 - 89 "The inside story on a man was that if he wanted to be successful he must become a rugged individualist, but then he should make some adjustments. After that, he needed to conform. You could go from being a rugged individualist to a conformist in the blink of an eye."
Time, Friday, Mar. 31, 1961 The Anatomy of Angst "No sooner had Americans learned that they must not be rugged individualists but must practice 'adjustment,' than they were told that they were all turning into conformists." ============================================== Chronicles, page 89: "Even the photos of Jackie Kennedy going in and out of revolving doors at the Carlyle Hotel uptown, carrying shopping bags of clothes, looked disturbing."
Time, Friday, Mar. 31, 1961 People: Mar. 31, 1961
"Usually accompanied by her sister, Princess Radziwill, wife of a Polish peer turned London businessman, Jackie looked more elegant each time she came through the revolving doors of the Carlyle Hotel." ============================================ Chronicles, page 89: "Nearby at the Biltmore, the Cuban Revolutionary Council was meeting. The Cuban government in exile."
Time, Friday, Mar. 31, 1961 Cuba: Getting Ready
"As flashbulbs popped in Manhattan's Biltmore Hotel, Manuel ('Tony') Varona, 52, coordinator of the middle-roading Revolutionary Democratic Front, and Manolo Ray, 36, chief of the farther left Revolutionary Movement of the People, shook hands and proclaimed the existence of the Cuban Revolutionary Council, in effect a government in exile, with a program and a president." ====================================== Chronicles, page 89: "Our tall Texan vice president, Lyndon Johnson, was quite a character, too. He'd flipped out and got angry at the US Secret Service — told them to stop..."
Time, Friday, Mar. 31, 1961 People: Mar. 31, 1961
"Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson notified the U.S. Secret Service that in Washington he was not to be fenced in or followed by its agents, two of whom had shadowed his predecessor." ======================================= Chronicles, page 90: "The dominant myth of the day seemed to be that anybody could do anything, even go to the moon. You could do whatever you wanted — in the ads and in the articles, ignore your limitations, defy them. If you were an indecisive person, you could become a leader and wear lederhosen. If you were a housewife, you could become a glamour girl with rhinestone sunglasses. Are you slow witted? No worries — you can be an intellectual genius."
Time, Friday, Mar. 31, 1961 The Anatomy of Angst
"This leads to a kind of compulsory freedom that encourages people not only to ignore their limitations but to defy them: the dominant myth is that the old can grow young, the indecisive can become leaders of men. The housewives can become glamour girls, the glamour girls can become actresses, the slow-witted can become intellectuals." ==================================== Chronicles, page 90: "Abstract painting and atonal music were hitting the scene, mangling recognizable reality."
Time, Friday, Mar. 31, 1961 The Anatomy of Angst
"Abstract & Atonal. Two of the forces that might be counted on to reduce anxiety in U.S. life — the artists and the social scientists — are contributing to it. In abstract painting and atonal music, the modern artist has largely destroyed recognizable reality..."
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