It seems that Bob Dylan, who’s nonetheless filled with surprises each on tour and on social media, is now pursuing a brand new facet hustle. In the present day the people legend shared a promo graphic for a brand new Patreon collection, Lectures From The Grave, on his varied accounts. It advertises “lectures” from notable folks of yore like Frank James, Aaron Burr, and “Wild Invoice” Hickok, in addition to quick tales and imagined “letters by no means despatched.” Bob Dylan’s historic fanfic could be yours to devour for simply $5 a month.
The revealed posts are attributed to totally different pen names. In a fictional letter credited to “Herbert Foster” and revealed on Dylan’s Patreon this morning, Mark Twain reaches out to Rudolph Valentino, the Hollywood icon who was 14 when the humorist died in 1910. The letter acknowledges they’re each useless. It begins:
Expensive Mr. Valentino,
I take up my pen underneath circumstances that may puzzle the calendar and embarrass the undertaker, for I’m informed that each of us have already accomplished the respectable enterprise of dying. But if letters can cross oceans, maybe they might additionally cross that lesser boundary which divides the dwelling from the traditionally inconvenienced.
Additionally revealed in the present day is a brief story titled Bull Rider, attributed to “Marty Lombard.” It begins:
The bus coughed me out someplace previous Amarillo, mud in my enamel and a sky that stretched out so large it felt prefer it was laughing at me. I had a duffel bag, two shirts, a paperback of The Sea Wolf with the backbone cracked like an previous man’s knuckles, and the sort of starvation you don’t repair with meals.
They stated there was a rodeo on the town… a kind of blinking, half-real locations the place males go to get thrown and name it glory.
I walked.
The highway shimmered prefer it was fascinated with disappearing. Vehicles screamed previous like prophets who had someplace higher to be. I caught out my thumb anyway, however no person needs a ghost with boots worn by on the heel.
By the point I hit the fairgrounds the solar was hanging low, prefer it already knew what would occur subsequent…
There have been yellow flickering lights strung up all over the place, an inexpensive man-made imitation of constellations. The scent hit me first: hay and sweat and beer tangled along with one thing sharp and electrical beneath, just like the air proper earlier than a storm or a nasty determination. Males leaned in opposition to fences chewing issues they didn’t want. Ladies moved like music. Someplace a radio performed a tune that forgot its personal disappointment midway by.
After which there have been the bulls.
The aforementioned lectures from the afterlife are lengthy audio monologues in numerous male voices. Aaron Burr: On The Artwork Of Survival runs for 70 minutes. Dylan previewed the hour-long Wild Invoice one on his Instagram final month:
The primary submit, however, is simply an embed of this YouTube:
An actual hodgepodge. The graphic, writing, and audio all bear the hallmarks of AI slop — although whether or not the Nobel Prize In Literature recipient used any AI instruments stays unclear. You’ll be able to subscribe to the Patreon right here.
