The spirit of A. J. Weberman hovered over "His Back Pages: Writers on Dylan," a panel discussion on Wednesday at the Housing Works Bookstore Cafe in SoHo to coincide with the Bob Dylan concerts at the Beacon Theater last week.

Back in 1970, Dylanologists may recall, the singer lived on Macdougal Street, where Mr. Weberman used to go though his garbage and otherwise harass him. Presumably, it was all done out of obsessive love, a feeling that animated the mostly young crowd and the panelists packed into the small space.

They included the moderators, music writers named Alan Light (short, dark, upright, with a rapid alto voice) and Andrew Hultkrans (tall, blond, laconic, slouched, with a slow bass), and the writers Jonathan Lethem, David Gates, Robert Polito and Susan Wheeler.

The proceedings started slowly. All agreed that the performances at the Beacon had been wonderful, with the exception of Tuesday night's. "It was a shambles," Mr. Polito said, "and you could sense his frustration and despair."

Next came some recondite consideration of whether Dylan had solved the "piano problem," the difficulty of finding the proper place for his piano on stage. (Mr. Dylan has mysteriously ceased playing guitar and is rumored to have arthritis.) Mr. Gates, who has twice interviewed Mr. Dylan for Newsweek, repeated what the singer had told him on the subject, then admitted that he wasn't sure what to make of it. Someone else alluded to Courbet's densely sexualized painting, "The Source," which was not immediately helpful.

Things picked up after Mr. Lethem, whose enthusiasm for Mr. Dylan is utterly infectious, asked at what level of "Dylan geekiness" he should pitch his remarks. "All the way!" Mr. Hultkrans replied, seconded by Mr. Light.

The rest of the evening went quickly, as the writers puzzled over why Mr. Dylan meant so much to them. Mr. Gates portrayed himself as a reluctant acolyte, who first heard Mr. Dylan in 1964 at the Newport Jazz Festival. "I snickered through this guy's set, until people shushed me." he said. "I thought he was such a poseur, a fake hillbilly, and I basically couldn't stand him."

Mr. Lethem, on the other hand, called himself "a second-generation Dylan listener," practically born into the tribe. "I had my parents' albums," he said, and the first song he loved as a small child was the peculiar "The Mighty Quinn," on the 1969 Isle of Wight live album. "I don't know what my heart was celebrating," Mr. Lethem said, but it clearly hasn't stopped since.

One theme running through the evening was Mr. Dylan's aversion to pleasing. The panelists agreed that in the 1980's, in particular, the singer seemed bent on distancing himself from fans, musicians, even his own music. Mr. Hultkrans compared him to Kafka - hiding his best work in drawers.

There was also the question of whether Mr. Dylan is in decline. The writer Luc Sante, who had been a scheduled panelist, apparently held that the period of 1965 to 1967 was the high-water mark, but Mr. Lethem disagreed. "I see" his genius "arising, with equal uncanniness, however fugitive," he said. "There are songs and performances that are as much of the part of the Godhead now as ever."

Fortunately, no one tried to rank Mr. Dylan in the canon of English-language poets (though Keats came up), and if the words appropriation, self-alienation and persona made brief appearances, they did not linger. Mostly, the Housing Works space had the pleasant feeling of a dorm room with students trying to express the inexpressible.

There was also one discordant note to the event. During the question-and-answer period, a young black woman with an unidentifiable foreign accent asked why the audiences at the Beacon were almost entirely white.

No one had an answer, though somebody did note that Otis Redding once said Mr. Dylan's songs had too many words. Still, a ripple of discomfort went through the room, which probably would have pleased the mercurial Mr. Dylan far more than the previous hour and a half of unadulterated admiration.