Why does he do it? And what makes him bother?
Isn't it ironic that the man who defined the art of literate expression in pop culture is currently performing on the same stages and competing against pop stars who have more interest in their backstage dining facilities than words?
Distanced from the likes of Britney Spears and Westlife by age, instinct and intellect, Bob Dylan is equally as much of, and no more a part of, pop music than he ever was: an outsider looking in, a hybrid of James Dean and James Joyce, occasionally partaking of the rock 'n roll circus and then getting out while no one is watching.
Bob Dylan was 60 a couple of days ago and he looks every second of it, yet the scrawny shopkeeper's son from a little Minnesota mining town has achieved what most of his 1960s contemporaries have not: 40 years of enigma, mystery, myth and imagination.
He has said that he created the persona of Bob Dylan in order to relieve himself of the ordinariness of being plain Robert Zimmerman. But creating the persona also created the myth, which, however romantic that might be, tends to cause problems.
In 1960, following graduation from high school, Dylan went to Denver, where he adopted a persona based on Woody Guthrie. Here, he assumed a new voice and began speaking with an Okie twang. He also adopted a new weather-beaten hobo appearance, devouring Guthrie songs as if there was no tomorrow.
He eventually moved to New York, where he glibly informed anyone who would listen of his background and family history; fabricated stories told with verve and charisma; big whopping lies and tall tales of where he was from and who he was. As Richard Williams wrote in his Dylan biography, A Man Called Alias: "If you create yourself around a character that isn't actually you, then sometimes life is going to get painful."
And it certainly did, but not immediately. Pain came later, in lyrics that dazzled the listener with their honesty, dexterity, complexity and acuity. Some people might dispute this, but along with The Beatles, Bob Dylan has been the most influential figure in the history of popular music and the person who brought a keen poetic literacy to rock lyrics.
A good selection of his songs over the past 40 years represent as much a part of society's progress as does a politician's speech or a ground-breaking work of art, with many of his lyrics sewn into the fabric of our language. Of course, unlike the hundreds of homogenous, emollient pop and rock entities, with Dylan you either get it or you do not; there is little room for prevarication.
While the teens and 20-somethings of the 1960s bought into Dylan's surreal poetry and unique open-for-caricature voice, as important a figure in folk as Ewan MacColl did not. "Only a completely non-critical audience," the figurehead of the English folk scene disparagingly wrote in 1965, "nourished on the watery pap of pop music, could have fallen for such drivel. I am still unable to see in him anything other than a youth of mediocre talent".
You could see Dylan didn't set himself up as anything grandiose or special, however. He once famously described himself as a "song and dance man", and in a thoroughly oblique way that's what he's been doing for years. Decade after decade, he has shadow-boxed with the expectations of the music industry and the public, releasing albums on a regular basis that soared from one end of the quality control spectrum to the other.
The 1960s output contain the kernel of Dylan's art; from the self-titled debut in 1962 to 1969's Nashville Skyline, nine albums in seven years can tell you more about Dylan than he possibly knows himself. Protest songs, love songs, acoustic, electric, psychedelic, country, rock 'n roll, folk, freewheeling lyrics influenced by the scriptures, drugs, ex-girlfriends and pretty much anything else that came to hand.
The 1970s? Blood On The Tracks, bitterness, desire (and Desire), born-again Christianity and the start of seriously disturbing nasal vocalising. The 1980s? A nightmare decade for Dylan and his fans, with mostly rubbish albums and a reputation saved at the decade's close by Oh Mercy.
The 1990s? Writer's block, some of the worst albums of his career, a near-death experience, freshly minted songs, a resurgence in popularity and one of the best albums of his career in 1997's Time Out Of Mind. Indeed, the latter Grammy-winning record proved what many long-term Dylan apologists had pointed out for years: just when you think you should write him off as a bit of a chancer, along comes a curveball to make you reconsider, to re-evaluate.
Which leads us back to those pertinent questions: Why does he do it, and what makes him bother? He's been on his Never-Ending Tour for over 12 years now, stopping at obscure towns in the US heartland, playing some 80 shows a year whether or not he has a record to promote. Because he comes around to your town as much as he does, there is no longer a mystique to Dylan as a live artist (an area where he can be infuriatingly, insultingly bad and transcendentally good).
It is said that reinvention is the crucible of a successful artist, but Dylan hasn't so much reinvented himself as become more and more enigmatic with each passing year. For so emotionally open an artist the man himself is a closed shop. Except the For Sale sign isn't going up just yet.
Dylan, like his younger stadium crowd-pullers U2 and REM, and his 1960s arena contemporaries, The Rolling Stones, is a byword for endurance and is certain to continue touring until the hunger to surpass his former glories dissipates. Or dies.
Why does he do it? Perhaps he can't do anything else. Perhaps it's just what he does. "Do I have any important philosophy for the world?" he once said. "Are you kidding?"
Bob Dylan plays Nowlan Park, Kilkenny, on Sunday July 15th