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Is Bob Dylan posting AI stories? Maybe. Read about that weird situation along with recommendations for queer historical fiction and books centering Black women throughout history. The latter two will be like a palate cleanser after the first. But before you get to the good stuff, you have to eat your bitter AI vegetable shlock.
Is Bob Dylan’s New Patreon Newsletter AI-Generated?
Nobel Prize-winning singer-songwriter-poet Bob Dylan’s new Patreon features a series of audio essays and short stories that have a whiff of AI about them. Nina Corcoran on Pitchfork noted that one of the stories features “a lot of similes”—something that can be a marker of AI-written content. And the audio essays in the “Lectures From the Grave” series seem to be utilizing an AI voice. Lit Hub’s Brittany Allen notes that all the writing “is framed as ‘curated by’ Bob Dylan, as opposed to the standard ‘written.’ Which language attests that it ain’t Bob, babe.”
Is it a joke? Is it real? Neither Dylan nor his team has confirmed or denied the use of AI, and his official website does not link to the Patreon. But as Alexis Petridis wrote for The Guardian: “if the whole business seems a little puzzling, there’s decades of evidence to suggest that simply makes it very on brand.”
Balancing Joy with Reality in Queer Historical Fiction
Eleanor Shearer, the author of River Sing Me Home and Fireflies in Winter, knows the challenges of writing queer historical fiction all too well. In her new novel, Shearer wanted to “write about the possibility of queer joy and intimacy even in hard times.” It’s something that can be complicated with LGBTQ historical fiction, both for writers trying to weigh historical accuracy against readability and readers who may have “particular conceptions of how difficult and dangerous it was to be queer throughout history” at best or “pretend queerness is an invention of the last century” at worst.
Past Tense
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For her newest book, Shearer drew on research about “how African pre-colonial and colonial cultures viewed gender and sexuality” as well as queer historical fiction books that balanced the joy and hope of love alongside the very real barriers LGBTQ people have faced throughout history. Some of the books she recommends include Tipping the Velvet, The Salt Roads, The Prophets, The Confessions of Frannie Langton, and, one of my personal favorites, How Much of These Hills is Gold.
Find even more recommendations for queer and trans historical fiction here on Book Riot: