In a scholarly essay published in The New Haven Review in 2010 (PDF), Warmuth wrote that Chronicles is “meticulously fabricated” and that “dozens upon dozens of quotations and anecdotes have been incorporated from other sources.
“Dylan has hidden many puzzles, jokes, secret messages, secondary meanings, and bizarre subtexts in his book,” Warmuth asserted in the essay. “Dylan borrows from American classics and travel guides, fiction and nonfiction about the Civil War, science fiction, crime novels, both Thomas Wolfe and Tom Wolfe, Hemingway, books on photography, songwriting, Irish music, soul music, and a book about the art of sideshow banter.”
“He dipped into both a book favored by a nineteenth-century occult society and a book about the Lewinsky scandal by Showgirls screen writer Joe Eszterhas,” Warmuth wrote.
Really interesting. Dylan's always been a) a storyman and b) a show-off, so it's not remotely surprising. I remember being confused that Dylan had written a memoir at all, because it seemed like such a trite career move -- now I understand that a bit better. Just another experiment.
I read Chronicles, both volumes (?), when they came out but was a bit too young to notice most of this stuff. I'm definitely curious to what extent the publisher was aware.