Read a Disarmingly Honest 1964 Letter from Bob Dylan on Fame

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“I am now famous,” wrote Bob Dylan in a stream-of-consciousness-style note to the editors of Broadside magazine in January of 1964. It was just before the release of the album that really sealed his fate as the voice of a generation, The Times They Are a-Changin’; his previous album, 1963’s The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, would eventually go platinum. A document of perhaps the most fascinating period of Dylan’s life, the letter finds the artist ambivalent about his newfound fame, musing, “I dont know if I like givin my autograph / oh yes sometimes I do… / but other times the back of my mind tells me / it is not honest … / for I am just fulfillin / a myth t somebody who’d actually treasure my / handwritin more’n his own handwritin…” Visit Letters of Note to see the entire typewritten letter, in which Dylan also analyzes his love for Suze Rotolo and laments, “my novel is going noplace.”