Tenement Press, paperback

Publication Date: November 22, 2024

Publisher Marketing:

In August 2016 I received an email from Jeff Rosen, Bob Dylans majordomo. I had been getting occasional writing assignments from Bob through Jeff for years, and they were extremely various: speeches, press kits, prefaces, a Buick commercial. Now he explained that he and Bob had been discussing a film project, to focus on his Gospel Years, 1979-1980. They had some great footagenot the rather stiff performances intended for an unmade TV special, but the rougher takes made for pick-ups. Bob had the thought that hed like to interrupt the footage with sermons delivered by an actor. Would I consider writing [them]? Lucy Sante, MMXXIV (from her introduction to these texts.)

An unabridged collection of Sante’s six commissioned sermons, the Tenement edition also carries an afterword by Greil Marcus. Edited iterations of these collated pieces were delivered by actor Michael Shannon, as directed by Jennifer Lebeau, on the DVD included in the deluxe edition of Bob DylansTrouble No More: The Bootleg Series Vol. 131979-1981(2017); a film broadcast in the UK as an entry in the BBCs ongoingArenaseries.

Lucy Santes books includeLow Life(Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003),Kill All Your Darlings(Verse Chorus Press, 2007),The Other Paris(Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2015),Maybe the People Would Be the Times(Verse Chorus Press, 2020), and the memoir,I Heard Her Call My Name(Heinemann, 2024).

Greil Marcusis the author ofLipstick Traces: A Secret History of the Twentieth Century(Harvard University Press, 1989). He contributed an introduction to the New York Review Books edition of Constance Rourkes 1931American Humor: A Study of the National Character. He was born in San Francisco and lives in Oakland.