I think Desolation row is an absurdist look at the times , I think the whole album was. Highway 61 the great old blues number is simply an accurate account of traveling highway 61 to get from point A to point B. When Dylan "revisited" ole 61 he finds a place where you can sell ten thousand pairs of red, white and blue shoestrings and a thousand telephones that don't ring, a place where even Abraham would defy God.Like a Rolling stone, The ballad of the thin man, and tom thumbs blues all back up this interpretation. The album is a song cycle about what Dylan saw when he revisited HWY 61 , desolation row is the last word on the subject.