CANR
WORK TITLE: UNDER THE RED WHITE AND BLUE
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: http://greilmarcus.net/
CITY: Berkeley
STATE:
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY: American
LAST VOLUME: CANR 294
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born June 19, 1945, in San Francisco, CA; son of Gerald Dodd (an attorney) and Eleanore (a homemaker) Marcus; married Jenelle Bernstein June 26, 1966; children: Emily Rose, Cecily Helen.
EDUCATION:University of California at Berkeley, B.A., 1966, M.A., 1967.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer and critic. Rolling Stone, San Francisco, CA, associate editor, 1969-70, book columnist, 1975-80, contributing editor, 1980—. National Book Critics Circle director, 1983-89. Teacher of American studies at University of California at Berkeley, 1971-72 and 2000—, at Princeton 2000, 2002, 2006, at New School University, 2007, 2009-14, and at City University of New York, 2015. Director of Pagnol & Co., operators of Chez Panisse restaurant, Berkeley, CA, 1979—.
AVOCATIONS:Paleolithic culture.
MEMBER:National Book Critics Circle (director, 1983-89).
AWARDS:Nominated for National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism, 1976, cited as one of 100 Best Nonfiction Books since 1923, Time, 2011, both for Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock ‘n’ Roll Music.
WRITINGS
Author of biweekly column “Undercover” for Rolling Stone, 1975-80; author of monthly columns “Real Life Rock” for New West, 1978-82, and Music (Tokyo, Japan), 1978-73, “Speaker to Speaker” for Artforum, 1983-87, “Real Life Rock Top Ten” for Village Voice, 1989-90, Artforum, 1990-97, and Salon.com, 1999—; “Elephant Dancing,” for Interview; and “Real Life Rock Top Ten” for the Believer. Contributor of essays and criticism on music, film, books, and politics to periodicals, including Creem, Rolling Stone, New York Times, New York Times Book Review, Los Angeles Times, Newsday, New Musical Express, Village Voice, New Yorker, Journal of Country Music, and TriQuarterly; author of preface for Walter Benjamin’s One-way Street, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA), 2016.
SIDELIGHTS
Greil Marcus is one of the most highly regarded writers on rock-and-roll music. Since beginning his career as an editor of the popular music magazine Rolling Stone, Marcus has written articles and reviews on music, books, politics, and other subjects for several leading publications and has written and edited numerous books. Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock ’n’ Roll Music, which was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle award and drew international attention, has been widely praised as one of the most important rock-and-roll books ever written. As Marcus’s career has progressed, his work has evolved from simple music criticism to true cultural commentary, exemplified in his book Double Trouble: Bill Clinton and Elvis Presley in the Land of No Alternatives and Three Songs, Three Singers, Three Nations.
Mystery Train
Marcus begins Mystery Train with short essays on two “ancestors” of rock and roll, 1950s singer Harmonica Frank and 1930s bluesman Robert Johnson, that serve as a “backdrop,” as Marcus explains, for the text that follows. Mark Crispin Miller, writing in the New York Review of Books, noted that, for Marcus, Harmonica Frank personifies what was to become the exuberant side of rock and roll, while Johnson represents an alternative, horror-filled, Puritan element in the music. After painting this backdrop, Marcus divides his discussion of America and its music into four chapters, each of which focuses on, but is not limited to, a performer or group whose work or career exhibits, in Marcus’s words, “a range and a depth that seem to crystalize naturally in visions and versions of America: its possibilities, limits, openings, traps.”
Marcus first presents chapters on such musicians as the Band, Sly Stone, and Randy Newman. Marcus then turns to “the knockout section of the book,” as Frank Rich, writing in the Village Voice, described the book’s longest chapter—the “Presliad,” which concerns Elvis Presley. Rich asserted that the writing in this section “reaches a pitch of ecstasy, horror, and understanding that diminishes the prose of the book’s previous chapters as effectively as Elvis diminishes the subjects of those chapters.”
Rich judged the writing to be “forceful, enthusiastic, almost driven” throughout Mystery Train. He and Miller both deemed the book “brilliant” in places; Miller called it “impressive … well-informed, and frequently hilarious” and found “more of rock’s spirit” in Mystery Train than in rock music itself. John Rockwell, writing in the New York Times, called Marcus “a writer of rare perception and a genuinely innovative thinker” and concluded that Marcus’s “blend of love and expertise should be read by anybody who cares about America or its music.”
Stranded and Lipstick Traces
Marcus’s next book, Stranded: Rock and Roll for a Desert Island, is a collection of essays that respond to a question he poses: If you were stranded on a desert island, what is the one record album you would want to have with you? Respondents include rock writers Dave Marsh, Grace Lichtenstein, Ellen Willis, Robert Christgau, Simon Frith, Ed Ward, and others. Marcus himself admits that the premise is “absurd,” but Laurence Gonzales in the New York Times Book Review found the essays to be “by turns thoughtful, compelling, sexy, hilarious, quirky—and surprisingly true to the basic impulse of rock-and-roll.”
Marcus probes the political significance of various countercultural movements in Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the Twentieth Century. The book “is no sedate academic record of libertarian revolt but a bold blending of anecdote, personal confession and cultural analysis, cutting backward and forward from Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols to the Surrealists,” advised New York Times Book Review contributor Terry Eagleton. “Treading a precarious line between eloquence and pretentiousness … [the] book is impressively adept at bringing alive some of the dramatic moments of the history it charts.”
Dead Elvis and Double Trouble
Elvis Presley’s place in American culture is examined in two of Marcus’s books, Dead Elvis: A Chronicle of a Cultural Obsession and Double Trouble. Dead Elvis is a collection of eighteen essays on Presley’s life, death, and legend, his legend continuing to grow in the years after he passed away. Marcus ponders what Americans’ obsession with the dead singer reveals about the national psyche. “It is a great story—gripping, touching, ultimately tragic,” declared Terry Teachout in the New York Times Book Review.
In Double Trouble, the author explores what he perceives to be a unique intersection of political and popular culture. In 1991 Bill Clinton won a spot on the presidential ballot, and Elvis Presley won a place on a U.S. postage stamp. Shortly thereafter, Clinton appeared on a late-night talk show playing one of Elvis’s signature songs, “Heartbreak Hotel,” on his saxophone. In Marcus’s opinion, that appearance marked the crucial turning point in Clinton’s campaign, leading to victory. Double Trouble draws parallels between Presley and Clinton: their poor southern roots, their legendary charm, and the way they both rose to fame only to fall into tawdry declines. Not every essay included in Double Trouble focuses on Presley and Clinton; a Kirkus Reviews contributor noted that “frequently the President and the King exist only as ghostly presences amid Marcus’s ruminations” on varied subjects. Reviewing the book for the Library Journal, David Szatmary judged it to be “a written equivalent of MTV: slick, entertaining, pithy, and insubstantial.” Yet a writer for Publishers Weekly rated Double Trouble a meaningful effort, stating: “With this book, Marcus … continues his legacy of scholarly pop journalism and his persistent effort to document pop culture’s influence on history.”
Invisible Republic and Like a Rolling Stone
Marcus focuses on another rock icon in two works, the 1997 Invisible Republic: Bob Dylan’s Basement Tapes, and the 2005 Like a Rolling Stone: Bob Dylan at the Crossroads. The former title examines the recordings made during the summer of 1967, when Dylan and his touring band, later known simply as the Band, sequestered themselves in a house in upstate New York, recording songs in the basement. Not made for general consumption, these songs, however, slowly appeared in bootleg editions. Finally, twenty-four of them were officially released in 1975. As Mary Gaitskill wrote in Artforum International, the resulting book is a “history, an analysis, and an adoration of Bob Dylan’s basement tapes.” According to New Statesman reviewer Thomas Jones, Marcus demonstrates in Invisible Republic “how the songs on the basement tapes belonged to the tradition of American folk music, a tradition stretching back to the 17th century.” Gordon Flagg, writing in Booklist, felt that Marcus’s “insight into this pivotal period of Dylan’s career is unmatched,” while Entertainment Weekly contributor Ken Tucker found the same book “an enthralling meditation.” Also writing in the New Statesman, Ben Thomson observed: “At the end of this intense and poetic volume many different emotions will be registered: joy, anger, relief … but the most diehard Dylano-phobe cannot fail to recognise that something important has gone on, even if they don’t know quite what it was.”
With Like a Rolling Stone, published on the fortieth anniversary of the Dylan song of the same title, Marcus focuses on that one hit, putting it into the context of the artist’s life and the culture of the time. As Jones noted: “Marcus considers the song in every context imaginable: musical, cultural, political, personal.” Released in the summer of 1965, Dylan’s song became a battle cry in the folk and rock world. Until that time, Dylan had been known as a folk singer; when he appeared onstage at the Newport Folk Festival with an electric guitar backup, he was booed off stage. Thus, the 1965 song was a turning point for Dylan and rock and roll. Jones found Marcus’s work a “marvellous, exhilarating book.” Variety reviewer Phil Gallo had further praise for Like a Rolling Stone, noting that it “enhances the Dylan legacy and makes it that much easier for future generations to assimilate and longtime fans to reevaluate or reconfirm their suspicions about his greatness.” For a Publishers Weekly critic, the same book was an “engaging exegesis … [that] is not just a study of a popular song and a historic era, but an examination of the heroic status of the American visionary artist.” Similarly, Flagg, writing in Booklist, observed that “Marcus’ vast understanding of American culture and intimate knowledge of Dylan’s career make this an eye-opening read.” Henry L. Carrigan, Jr., writing in Library Journal, called the book “engaging cultural history.” Gregory McNamee, writing for the Hollywood Reporter, had further praise, commenting that “Marcus’s appreciative, eye-opening biography helps us hear [the song] with fresh ears, and it’s a fine birthday present.”
The Rose & the Briar and The Shape of Things to Come
Working with Sean Wilentz, Marcus edited the 2005 collection The Rose & the Briar: Death, Love and Liberty in the American Ballad. The editors asked twenty-two nonacademic writers and musicians, such as novelist Joyce Carol Oates and cartoonist R. Crumb, to pick their favorite ballad and then write about it. “Their responses are wonderfully varied,” wrote Booklist contributor Ray Olson. Szatmary, writing in Library Journal, found the collection to be “sometimes fascinating and at other times highly dispensable” but also noted that it “offers an interesting look at a music staple.” Higher praise came from a Publishers Weekly critic, who felt The Rose & the Briar was an “impressive, innovative tribute” to the ballad form, which the editors contend is a major source of historical and cultural information about America and Americans.
Marcus turned social critic again for the 2006 title The Shape of Things to Come: Prophecy and the American Voice, in which he attempts to examine his native country from the perspective of the arts rather than politics. Here, Marcus uses three different speeches—a 1630 sermon by John Winthrop, Abraham Lincoln’s second inaugural address, and Martin Luther King’s speech at the March on Washington—to illuminate historical and cultural trends in the United States. Tying these disparate addresses together is a social commentary that ranges from the movies of David Lynch to the novels of Philip Roth and the music of David Thomas. Such artists are the true prophets of America, according to Marcus. Booklist critic Flagg had a mixed assessment of The Shape of Things to Come, finding that though “the book is disappointingly inchoate, the reading is consistently exhilarating.” Library Journal contributor Amy Lewontin, however, found more to like in the title, terming it a “fascinating book on the notion of prophecy in the American character.” Similarly, a reviewer for Publishers Weekly noted: “Marcus plumbs the depth and breadth of American exceptionalism through his unique lens of cultural criticism.” The same reviewer went on to term the book a “tour de force.” Reviewing The Shape of Things to Come in the Spectator, Ian Sansom called Marcus “a jivetalking one-man Cultural Studies department.”
A New Literary History of America
Marcus turns to literary and cultural matters, working as editor with the Harvard professor of English and Afro-American studies, Werner Sollos, on the 2009 book A New Literary History of America. This is the usual compendium of reprinted essays on books and writers; instead it gathers an eclectic group of writers such as Walter Mosley, Camille Paglia, Bharati Mukherjee, Ishmael Reed, and Jonathan Lethem in a book 1,100 pages in length and containing 219 original essays on aspects of almost five centuries of American culture, from the movies to Bob Dylan to technology, Alcoholics Anonymous, and Barack Obama.
A Publishers Weekly reviewer had high praise for this compendium, calling it an “astounding achievement in multiculturalism and American studies.” Booklist contributor Donna Seaman similarly termed the work an “adventurous, jazzily choral, and kaleidoscopic book of interpretations, illuminations, and revitalized history.” Writing in the Los Angeles Times Online, Scott Timberg felt that “one of Marcus’ critical strengths is his love of the obscure, and his enthusiasm in finding overlooked figures and ideas, in building a sort of counter-canon.” London Observer online reviewer Adam Mars-Jones also had praise for the volume, declaring: “Hats off … to the editors above all, for constructing a volume where each element reinforces every other, often by contradicting it, so that the whole vast book is more exciting than even its most impressive part.”
Bob Dylan by Greil Marcus
Marcus gathers four decades of his writing in Bob Dylan by Greil Marcus: Writings 1968-2010. Included here are reviews of Dylan’s work, such as Marcus’s critical appraisal of the 1970 album Self Portrait, and numerous other albums and tours, all published in magazines from Rolling Stone to Creem. Writing of the tone of these gathered reviews and essays, Bookslut website reviewer Robert Loss observed: “That Marcus paints Dylan into the greater panorama of American culture may be what really invokes the ire of Dylan’s fans, who see him as a mythic individual capable of transcending history. Marcus is constantly working against this soapy lie, mainly by staying suspicious of the ‘germ in the idea of equality’: authenticity.” Loss went on to term this collection “eccentric, volatile, persuasive.”
A Kirkus Reviews contributor did not have a high opinion of this “fatiguing” collection, noting: “The writer relies on torturously scholastic readings of lyrics, odd and sometimes irrelevant sources and analogs and precious little musical explication to pick apart his thorny and highly inconsistent subject’s work.” On the other hand, Michial Farmer, writing at the Christian Humanist Blog, had a much higher assessment of the work: “All in all, Bob Dylan by Greil Marcus might mimic a so-called ‘beach read’ for those readers who, like me, don’t much like to have a good time. The writing is so pleasant that one is apt to forget how Marcus stretches and plays with Dylan’s mythos. The book is essential for fans of its subject, of course, but it’s worth looking into for those who are interested in how good rock writing is supposed to work—or those who are interested in the deconstruction and reconstruction of an American legend.” Similarly, London Guardian online contributor Mark Ford felt that “this volume is itself a kind of patchwork quilt, by turns poetic and contentious, at times testy as a spurned lover, but worth reading for the occasions when Dylan at last lives up to Marcus’s notions of what Dylan should be, and the writing swoons and soars in its dizzying efforts to make us feel what Dylan’s music is doing to him, and the ‘love minus zero / no limit’ it can inspire.”
When That Rough God Goes Riding and The Doors
Marcus provides personal reflections on the work of two rock icons in his When That Rough God Goes Riding: Listening to Van Morrison, from 2010, and The Doors: A Lifetime of Listening to Five Mean Years, from 2011. Speaking with SFGate.com contributor Sam Whiting, Marcus remarked: “These books tell you almost nothing about the individuals involved. They are about engaging with these pieces of music.” Whiting noted in this regard: “[Marcus’s] critical approach is to examine cultural history through the prism of a song. It’s a formula that he works better than anyone in the world of serious rock literati.”
In When That Rough God Goes Riding, Marcus applies a thematic rather than chronological approach to singer-songwriter Van Morrison, looking at the breadth of his career but focusing primarily on his 1968 breakthrough album, Astral Weeks. Writing in Booklist, Flagg felt that “no critical testimonial is more welcome than this assessment of Morrison’s work by one of America’s most astute cultural critics.” Further praise for the work was offered by PopMatters website contributor Robert Loss, who thought Marcus “explores moments of contradiction, sublime beauty, audacity, failure and grace in the singer-songwriter’s career with a keen ear and precision even as it maintains the ruminative tone and rich thoughtfulness we’ve come to expect from one of America’s best cultural critics and historians.”
In The Doors, Marcus “offers a relentlessly beautiful and insightful evaluation” of that band’s music and achievements, according to a Publishers Weekly reviewer. Again focusing on the music rather than the private lives of band members, Marcus closely examines the group’s first album, The Doors, and such iconic songs as “The End” and “Light My Fire.” He also deals with the second album, Strange Days, as well as hit singles. A Kirkus Reviews contributor felt this is an “honorable if sometimes clumsy attempt to put the Doors in their cultural place.” Writing in the New York Times, Dwight Garner was more positive in his assessment, terming the work “acute and ardent.” Garner added: “Mr. Marcus’s achievement in The Doors is to isolate and resurrect this band’s best music and set it adrift in a swirling and literate cultural context. He catches ‘the sweep, the grandeur, the calmness’ of their songs. He underscores Jim Morrison’s otherworldly appeal.” Likewise, SFGate.com reviewer Chris Willman concluded: “Marcus is just the discriminating wheat-from-chaff separator the Doors have long been in need of to reconfirm their legend among the intelligentsia.”
The History of Rock ’n’ Roll in Ten Songs and Real Life Rock
In The History of Rock ’n’ Roll in Ten Songs, Greil argues that the key to understanding rock music is not through the genre’s chronological history but through different performers across different times and periods. In a National Public Radio All Things Considered interview, Greil stated: “Songs travel and people take them into their lives in all different kinds of unpredictable and really untraceable ways.” Overall, critics found this approach appealing. David Kirby, writing in Washington Post Book World, stated: “When you throw history out the window, everything else goes, too. That’s why the Pilgrims came to America, and that’s why rock-and-roll was invented here. And that’s why, to understand history, we need an original mind like Greil Marcus’s, one as thoroughly steeped in history as his is, to remind us that when everybody’s running toward the dance floor, the music is all that counts.” Paul McGuinness, writing in Record Collector, noted: “Greil Marcus takes the scenic route. Not for him the blunt logic of most rock scholarship, which usually drills deep into the narrow confines of one subject area. The highly regarded Californian author and lecturer charges down a particular path and then meanders off-road through the dense pop-cultural undergrowth.”
(open new)In Real Life Rock: The Complete Top Ten Columns, 1986–2014, Marcus compiles ten columns he published in the Village Voice, Arforum, Salon, City Pages, Interview, and the Believer covering a range of topics, from rock music and movies to advertisements and gossip. In a review in Choice, R.A. Aken insisted that “this is a provocative, if not required, read for those interned in journalism, sociology, and popular culture.”
Three Songs, Three Singers, Three Nations and Under the Red White and Blue
In 2015 Marcus published Three Songs, Three Singers, Three Nations: The William E. Massey Sr. Lectures in the History of American Civilization 2013. In each of the three essays, Marcus positions Bascom Lamar Lunsford’s 1928 “I Wish I Was a Mole in the Ground,” Geeshie Wiley’s 1930 “Last Kind Words Blues,” and Bob Dylan’s 1964 “Ballad of Hollis Brown” as significant works of American folk music that show the country from three different vantages. Reviewing the book in Notes, Marci Cohen reasoned that “these are rambling reflections, drawing the reader in, rather than a series of highly structured persuasive essays. There are no billboards that signpost thesis statements with blinking lights. The book works best as a supplement to more straightforward works, adding a new point of view to the broad picture of American folk music as well as detailed studies of the three specific recordings.”
Marcus published Under the Red White and Blue: Patriotism, Disenchantment, and the Stubborn Myth of the Great Gatsby in 2020. Marcus explores the significance of the novel The Great Gatsby on the American psyche as represented in the performing arts. A contributor to Kirkus Reviews stated: “Astute, challenging, and far-reaching: There’s much to chew on in Marcus’ disquisition on Gatsby’s legacy.” A Publishers Weekly contributor noted that the length and frequency of the “invariably well-written” movie and performance summaries “sometimes overwhelms the book’s critical component.” Nevertheless, the same Publishers Weekly contributor found Under the Red White and Blue to be “an entertaining meander for Fitzgerald fans.”(close new)
Author Comments
Marcus once told CA: “The critics who inspired me to start writing or who have kept me going, suggesting less how to practice criticism than what it might be worth, include Pauline Kael, D.H. Lawrence, Leslie Fiedler, Harold Rosenberg, Manny Farber, and Walter Benjamin. What they have in common, I think, is the ability to go in any direction at any time; I try to do that, perhaps too self-consciously.
“When I first began writing, I was interested in continuity: in constructing a rock ’n’ roll tradition, and connecting it to the mainstream of American culture. In recent years I have found myself more interested in discontinuities—in the broadest sense, in cultural relationships between phenomena that, given the way we usually see the world, should not be related at all. Over the years, though, I suppose my ambition has been to reconstruct a conversation that took place between people who never met, be they blues singer Robert Johnson and Jonathan Edwards, or Johnny Rotten and the dadaist Richard Huelsenbeck. Culture to me is a field of surprise; I work in it in order to be surprised, and to communicate that sense of surprise to others, because a life infused with surprise is better than a life that is not.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
American Book Review, April 1, 1996, review of The Dustbin of History, p. 10; May 1, 1998, review of Invisible Republic: Bob Dylan’s Basement Tapes, p. 21; May 1, 2006, “A Song like a Pistol Shot,” p. 26.
American Scholar, December 22, 2011, Louis P. Masur, review of Bob Dylan by Greil Marcus: Writings 1968-2010.
Artforum International, June 22, 1997, Mary Gaitskill, review of Invisible Republic; June 22, 2005, Stephanie Zacharek, review of Like a Rolling Stone: Bob Dylan at the Crossroads.
Atlantic Monthly, October 1, 2006, review of The Shape of Things to Come: Prophecy and the American Voice, p. 126.
Booklist, May 15, 1993, Benjamin Segedin, review of Ranters and Crowd Pleasers: Punk in Pop Music, p. 1667; October 1, 1995, Jay Freeman, review of The Dustbin of History, p. 247; May 1, 1997, Gordon Flagg, review of Invisible Republic, p. 1473; November 15, 2004, Ray Olson, review of The Rose & the Briar: Death, Love and Liberty in the American Ballad, p. 542; March 15, 2005, Gordon Flagg, review of Like a Rolling Stone, p. 1255; September 1, 2006, Gordon Flagg, review of The Shape of Things to Come, p. 42; September 15, 2009, Donna Seaman, review of A New Literary History of America, p. 18; April 1, 2010, Gordon Flagg, review of When That Rough God Goes Riding: Listening to Van Morrison, p. 11; September 1, 2014, Ben Segedin, review of The History of Rock ’n’ Roll in Ten Songs, p. 25.
Books and Culture, May 1, 1998, review of Invisible Republic, p. 16.
Books in Canada, January 1, 2007, “For Love of Culture,” p. 15.
Bookwatch, May 1, 2005, review of Like a Rolling Stone.
Borderlines, December 22, 1990, “Interview with Greil Marcus.”
Boston Globe, April 17, 2005, Devin McKinney, “Greil’s World.”
Chatelaine, March 1, 1988, Jay Scott, review of Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung, p. 12.
Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, March 1, 1996, M. Cantor, review of The Dustbin of History, p. 1206; December 1, 1997, review of Invisible Republic, p. 646; April 1, 2005, R.D. Cohen, review of The Rose & the Briar, p. 1410; July 1, 2005, R.D. Cohen, review of Like a Rolling Stone, p. 1996; March 1, 2016, R.A. Aken, review of Real Life Rock: The Complete Top Ten Columns, 1986-2014, p. 1028.
Come-All-Ye, September 22, 1993, review of Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock ‘n’ Roll Music, p. 10.
Commentary, June 1, 1970, review of Rock and Roll Will Stand p. 92; July 1, 1980, review of Stranded: Rock and Roll for a Desert Island, p. 77.
Contemporary Review, August 1, 1997, review of The Dustbin of History, p. 107.
Current Biography, October 1, 1999, “Marcus, Greil,” p. 35.
Dissent, March 22, 1998, review of Invisible Republic, p. 100.
English Review, February 1, 2006, Richard Danson Brown, review of Like a Rolling Stone, p. 5.
Entertainment Weekly, May 9, 1997, Ken Tucker, review of Invisible Republic, p. 75; May 22, 1998, review of Invisible Republic, p. 63.
Georgia Review, March 22, 1997, Joe Bonomo, review of The Dustbin of History.
Harper’s, December 1, 1988, “History outside of History,” p. 21.
History Today, October 1, 1995, review of The Dustbin of History, p. 53.
Hollywood Reporter, April 18, 2005, Gregory McNamee, review of Like a Rolling Stone, p. 11.
Journal of American Studies, December 1, 1993, review of Dead Elvis: A Chronicle of a Cultural Obsession, p. 417; January 1, 1999, Robert Cochran, review of Invisible Republic, p. 106.
Journal of Popular Culture, December 22, 1996, Richard Gid Powers, review of The Dustbin of History, p. 25.
Kirkus Reviews, March 1, 1997, review of Invisible Republic, p. 358; July 1, 2000, review of Double Trouble: Bill Clinton and Elvis Presley in the Land of No Alternatives, p. 940; March 1, 2005, review of Like a Rolling Stone, p. 277; June 15, 2006, review of The Shape of Things to Come, p. 621; September 15, 2010, review of Bob Dylan by Greil Marcus; September 1, 2011, review of The Doors: A Lifetime of Listening to Five Mean Years; June 15, 2014, review of The History of Rock ’n’ Roll in Ten Songs; March 15, 2020, review of Under the Red, White, and Blue: Patriotism, Disenchantment, and the Stubborn Myth of ‘The Great Gatsby’.
Library Journal, April 15, 1993, Barry X. Miller, review of Ranters and Crowd Pleasers, p. 92; November 15, 1995, Scott H. Silverman, review of The Dustbin of History, p. 90; May 1, 1997, Lloyd Jansen, review of Invisible Republic, p. 105; August 1, 2000, David Szatmary, review of Double Trouble, p. 107; June 15, 2001, Lloyd Jansen, review of “What’d I Say”: The Atlantic Story, Fifty Years of Music, p. 74; October 15, 2004, Dave Szatmary, review of The Rose & the Briar, p. 65; April 1, 2005, Henry L. Carrigan, review of Like a Rolling Stone, p. 96; August 1, 2006, Amy Lewontin, review of The Shape of Things to Come, p. 109; August 1, 2009, Mark Alan Williams, review of A New Literary History of America, p. 81; September 1, 2014, Chris Martin, review of The History of Rock ’n’ Roll in Ten Songs, p. 109.
Los Angeles Times Book Review, May 25, 1997, review of Invisible Republic, p. 3.
Maclean’s, September 8, 2014, Michael Barclay, review of The History of Rock ’n’ Roll in Ten Songs, p. 78.
Mother Jones, September 1, 2000, Ana Marie Cox, review of Double Trouble.
Nation, August 25, 1997, Bruce Shapiro, review of Invisible Republic, p. 44.
New Statesman, March 4, 1988, Simon Reynolds, review of Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung, p. 29; May 30, 1997, Ben Thomson, review of Invisible Republic, p. 54; May 30, 2005, Thomas Jones, “In the Basement,” p. 49; September 26, 2014, Mark Ellen, “Red, White and Blues,“review of The History of Rock ’n’ Roll in Ten Songs, p. 67.
New Statesman & Society, June 11, 1993, Laurence O’Toole, review of In the Fascist Bathroom: Writings on Punk, 1977-1992, p. 40; January 12, 1996, Phil Edwards, review of The Dustbin of History, p. 39;
New York, May 5, 1997, Luc Sante, review of Invisible Republic, p. 81.
New Yorker, December 2, 2015, David Cantwell, “Greil Marcus’s Critical Super Power.”
New York Review of Books, February 3, 1977, Mark Crispin Miller, review of Mystery Train, p. 31; April 9, 1998, Geoffrey O’Brien, review of Invisible Republic, p. 45.
New York Times, June 14, 1975, John Rockwell, review of Mystery Train, p. 25; November 25, 1987, Michiko Kakutani, review of Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung, p. 25; November 16, 2011, Dwight Garner, review of The Doors, p. C4.
New York Times Book Review, February 10, 1980, Laurence Gonzales, review of Stranded, p. 13; November 22, 1987, Ken Tucker, review of Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung, p. 15; April 9, 1989, Terry Eagleton, review of Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the Twentieth Century, p. 12; November 3, 1991, Terry Teachout, review of Dead Elvis; December 20, 1992, review of Dead Elvis, p. 24; January 28, 1996, review of The Dustbin of History, p. 20; May 4, 1997, review of Invisible Republic, p. 12; October 1, 2006, Stephen Metcalf, “American Dreams,” review of The Shape of Things to Come, p. 17; August 1, 2010, Peter Gerstenzang, review of When That Rough God Goes Riding, p. 18.
Notes, 2016, Marci Cohen, review of Three Songs, Three Singers, Three Nations: The William E. Massey Sr. Lectures in the History of American Civilization 2013, p. 273.
Observer (London, England), October 25, 1992, review of Dead Elvis, p. 63; June 13, 1993, review of Lipstick Traces, p. 62; August 1, 1993, review of In the Fascist Bathroom, p. 52; June 25, 1994, review of In the Fascist Bathroom, p. 21; May 25, 1997, review of Invisible Republic, p. 16; July 27, 1997, review of Invisible Republic, p. 15.
Popular Music, October 1, 1994, Jason Toynbee, review of In the Fascist Bathroom, p. 365.
Popular Music and Society, March 22, 1997, review of Mystery Train, p. 121.
Prospects, January 1, 2002, “Hip Americana: The Cultural Criticism of Greil Marcus,” p. 611.
Publishers Weekly, July 31, 1987, Genevieve Stuttaford, review of Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung, p. 64; November 15, 1991, “Greil Marcus: The Rock Critic and Social Analyst Picks Elvis as His Newest Subject,” p. 53; March 15, 1993, review of Ranters and Crowd Pleasers, p. 77; March 7, 1994, review of Ranters and Crowd Pleasers, p. 67; September 18, 1995, review of The Dustbin of History, p. 119; March 17, 1997, review of Invisible Republic, p. 62; August 28, 2000, review of Double Trouble, p. 69; May 28, 2001, review of “What’d I Say,”: The Atlantic Story, Fifty Years of Music p. 64; October 18, 2004, review of The Rose & the Briar, p. 58; February 21, 2005, review of Like a Rolling Stone, p. 169; June 5, 2006, review of The Shape of Things to Come, p. 48; July 20, 2009, review of A New Literary History of America, p. 133; August 29, 2011, review of The Doors, p. 52; August 18, 2014, review of The History of Rock ’n’ Roll in Ten Songs, p. 68; March 2, 2020, review of Under the Red, White, and Blue, p. 55.
Record Collector, March 12, 2015, Paul McGuinness, review of The History of Rock ’n’ Roll in Ten Songs, p. 101.
Reference & Research Book News, February 1, 2005, review of The Rose & the Briar, p. 220; May 1, 2005, review of Like a Rolling Stone, p. 234.
Reviewer’s Bookwatch, April 1, 2006, Oliver Norton, review of Like a Rolling Stone.
Rolling Stone, June 10, 1993, Matt Damsker, review of Ranters and Crowd Pleasers, p. 33; October 16, 1997, Anthony DeCurtis, review of Invisible Republic, p. 32.
Saturday Night, March 1, 1970, review of Rock and Roll Will Stand, p. 36.
Shift, December 1, 1998, “Everything New Is Old Again: Veteran Rock Critic Greil Marcus Has Seen Pop-Culture Trends Come and Go,” p. 34.
Spectator, August 5, 2006, Ian Sansom, “A Never-ending Story.”
Times Literary Supplement, June 14, 1996, Phil Baker, review of The Dustbin of History, p. 12; July 18, 1997, Tim Adams, review of Invisible Republic, p. 12; January 12, 2007, “From the Lost Republic,” p. 9.
Utne Reader, March 1, 1993, review of Mystery Train and Ranters and Crowd Pleasers, p. 111; May 1, 1997, review of Invisible Republic, p. 84.
Variety, April 4, 2005, Phil Gallo, review of Like a Rolling Stone, p. 70.
Village Voice, May 26, 1975, Frank Rich, review of Mystery Train, p. 41; January 21, 1980, review of Stranded, p. 47; October 5, 1993, review of Ranters and Crowd Pleasers, p. 68.
Virginia Quarterly Review, March 22, 1996, review of The Dustbin of History, p. 57.
Washington Post Book World, November 29, 1992, review of Dead Elvis, p. 12; August 22, 1993, p. 13; December 18, 2005, Rachel Hartigan Shea, review of The Rose & the Briar, p. 11.
Wilson Quarterly, June 22, 1993, review of Mystery Train, p. 30.
ONLINE
All Things Considered, http://www.npr.org/ (August 30, 2014), interview with the author.
Bookslut, http://www.bookslut.com/ (December 6, 2011), Robert Loss, review of Bob Dylan by Greil Marcus.
Boston Phoenix, http://www.bostonphoenix.com/ (February 8, 1996), Charles Taylor, review of The Dustbin of History.
Christian Humanist Blog, http://www.christianhumanist.org/ (July 27, 2011), Michial Farmer, review of Bob Dylan by Greil Marcus.
Eyecandypromo.com, http://www.eyecandypromo.com/ (July 14, 2007), “Marcus Greil.”
Guardian Online, http://www.guardian.co.uk/ (May 14, 2011), Mark Ford, review of Bob Dylan by Greil Marcus.
Los Angeles Times Online, http://www.latimes.com/ (October 4, 2009), Scott Timberg, review of A New Literary History of America.
Mother Jones Online, http://motherjones.com/ (October 18, 2010), Michael Mechanic, “The Riff.”
Observer Online, http://www.guardian.co.uk/ (January 31, 2010), Adam Mars-Jones, review of A New Literary History of America.
OJornal News, http://my.ojornal.com/ (June 14, 2011), Peter Chianca, “Hits All the Right Notes.”
OregonLive.com http://www.oregonlive.com/ (April 19, 2010), Jeff Baker, review of When That Rough God Goes Riding.
PopMatters, http://www.popmatters.com/ (April 19, 2010), Robert Loss, review of When That Rough God Goes Riding.
Powells.com, http://www.powells.com/ (October 10, 2006), “All These Inches away from Where Greil Marcus Began.”
Retro Kustom Honkytonk, http://www.retrokustomhonkytonk.com/ (September 19, 2011), review of Rockabilly: The Twang Heard ’round the World: The Illustrated History.
RockCritics.com, http://www.rockcritics.com/ (July 14, 2007), Nate Seltenreich, “An Interview with Greil Marcus.”
San Francisco Chronicle Online, http://articles.sfgate.com/ (October 30, 2011), Sam Whiting, “Greil Marcus Examines Culture through Prism of Pop”; (November 6, 2011, Chris Willman, review of The Doors.
Slate.com, http://www.slate.com/ (May 4, 2015), review of The History of Rock ’n’ Roll in Ten Songs.
Washington City Paper, http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/ (April 23, 2010), Ted Scheinman, review of When That Rough God Goes Riding.
Washington Post World Book, http://www.washingtonpost.com/ (September 12, 2014), David Kirby, review of The History of Rock ’n’ Roll in Ten Songs.
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Greil Marcus
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Greil Marcus
Greil Marcus SRN.jpg
Marcus at Festival SOS 4.8, in Murcia, 2014
Born June 19, 1945 (age 74)
San Francisco, California
Nationality American
Citizenship American
Occupation Author, rock critic, journalist
Known for Rock critic for Rolling Stone, Creem, the Village Voice, and Pitchfork
Spouse(s) Jenny Marcus (1966–)[1]
Greil Marcus (born June 19, 1945) is an American author, music journalist and cultural critic. He is notable for producing scholarly and literary essays that place rock music in a broader framework of culture and politics.
Contents
1 Biography
2 Bibliography
3 References
4 External links
Biography
Marcus was born Greil Gerstley, in San Francisco, the only son of Greil Gerstley and Eleanor Gerstley, née Hyman.[2] His father, a naval officer, died in December 1944, in the Philippine typhoon that sank the USS Hull, on which he was serving as second-in-command.[3] Admiral William Halsey had ordered the U.S. Third Fleet to sail into Typhoon Cobra "to see what they were made of,"[4] and, despite the crew's urging, Gerstley refused to disobey the order, arguing that there had never been a mutiny in the history of the U.S. Navy. The incident inspired the novel The Caine Mutiny.[3] Eleanor Gerstley was three months pregnant when her husband died. She married Gerald Marcus in 1948, and her son was adopted and took his stepfather's surname.[3] Greil Marcus has several half-siblings.[5]
Marcus earned an undergraduate degree in American studies from the University of California, Berkeley, where he also undertook graduate studies in political science.[6] He often cited as a major influence a Berkeley political science professor, Michael Rogin, of whom he said: "That course had more to do with putting me on the path I've followed ever since, for good or ill, than anything else."[7]
He has been a rock critic and columnist for Rolling Stone (where he was the first reviews editor) and other publications, including Creem, the Village Voice, Artforum, and Pitchfork. From 1983 to 1989, he was on the board of directors of the National Book Critics Circle.[6] Since 1966 he has been married to Jenny Marcus, with whom he has two daughters.[1] His book Mystery Train (published in 1975 and in its sixth revised and updated edition in 2015) is notable for placing rock and roll in the context of American cultural archetypes, from Moby-Dick to The Great Gatsby to Stagger Lee. Marcus's "recognition of the unities in the American imagination that already exist" inspired countless rock journalists.[8] On August 30, 2011, Time magazine published a list of its selection of the 100 best nonfiction books since 1923, when the magazine was first published; Mystery Train was on the list, one of only five books dealing with culture and the only one on the subject of American music. Writing for the New York Times, Dwight Garner said, "Mystery Train is among the few works of criticism that can move me to something close to tears. It reverberated in my young mind like the E major chord that ends the Beatles’ “A Day in the Life.”[9]
His next book, Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the 20th Century (1989), stretched his trademark riffing across a century of Western civilization. Positing punk rock as a transhistorical cultural phenomenon, Marcus examined philosophical connections between subjects as diverse as medieval heretics, Dada, the Situationists, and the Sex Pistols.
Marcus published Dead Elvis, a collection of writings about Elvis Presley, in 1991, and Ranters and Crowd Pleasers (reissued as In the Fascist Bathroom: Punk in Pop Music), an examination of post-punk political pop, in 1993.
Using bootleg recordings of Bob Dylan as a starting point, he dissected the American subconscious in Invisible Republic: Bob Dylan's Basement Tapes, published in 1997.
He writes the column "Elephant Dancing" for Interview and "Real Life Rock Top Ten"[10] for The Believer. He occasionally teaches graduate courses in American Studies at the University of California, Berkeley,[6] and teaches a lecture class, "The Old Weird America: Music as Democratic Speech – From the Commonplace Song to Bob Dylan", at the New School.[11] During the fall of 2008, he held the Winton Chair in the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Minnesota, where he taught and lectured on the history of American pop culture.[12]
His book When That Rough God Goes Riding: Listening to Van Morrison was published in March 2010.[13] It focuses on "Marcus's quest to understand Van Morrison's particular genius through the extraordinary and unclassifiable moments in his long career".[14][15] The title is derived from Morrison's 1997 song "Rough God Goes Riding".
He subsequently published Bob Dylan by Greil Marcus: Writings 1968–2010 (2010) and The Doors: A Lifetime of Listening to Five Mean Years (2011).
The Los Angeles Review of Books in 2012 published a 20,000-word interview with Marcus about his life.[16] A collection of his interviews, edited by Joe Bonomo, was published by the University Press of Mississippi in 2012.
Bibliography
This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.
Rock and Roll Will Stand (1969), editor
Double Feature: Movies & Politics (1972), co-author with Michael Goodwin
Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock 'n' Roll Music (1975, sixth edition 2015)
Stranded: Rock and Roll for a Desert Island (1979), editor and contributor
Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the 20th Century (1989)
Dead Elvis: A Chronicle of a Cultural Obsession (1991)
In the Fascist Bathroom: Punk in Pop Music, 1977–1992 (1993, originally published as Ranters & Crowd Pleasers)
The Dustbin of History (1995)
Invisible Republic: Bob Dylan's Basement Tapes (1997; also published as The Old, Weird America: Bob Dylan's Basement Tapes, 2001)
Double Trouble: Bill Clinton and Elvis Presley in a Land of No Alternatives (2001)
The Manchurian Candidate: BFI Film Classics, 68 (2002)
The Rose & the Briar: Death, Love and Liberty in the American Ballad (2004), co-editor with Sean Wilentz
Like a Rolling Stone: Bob Dylan at the Crossroads (2005)
The Shape of Things to Come: Prophecy in the American Voice (2006)
A New Literary History of America (2009), co-editor with Werner Sollors
Best Music Writing 2009, 10th anniversary edition (2009), guest editor with Daphne Carr (series editor)
Songs Left Out Of The Ballad of Sexual Dependency (lecture) (2009)
When That Rough God Goes Riding: Listening to Van Morrison (2010)
Bob Dylan by Greil Marcus: Writings 1968–2010 (2011)
The Old, Weird America: The World of Bob Dylan's Basement Tapes (2011)
The Doors: A Lifetime of Listening to Five Mean Years (2011)
Conversations with Greil Marcus (2012), edited by Joe Bonomo
The History of Rock 'n' Roll in Ten Songs (2014)
Three Songs, Three Singers, Three Nations (2015)
Real Life Rock: The Complete Top Ten Columns, 1986–2014 (2015)
Greil Marcus’s Critical Super Power
By David Cantwell
December 2, 2015
The critic Greil Marcus scours old maps for new lands.
The critic Greil Marcus scours old maps for new lands.
“Perhaps the most pernicious strain of contemporary criticism says one thing before it says anything else, says it to whatever historical event or cultural happenstance is supposedly at issue: ‘You can’t fool me.’ ” The pop-music critic Greil Marcus wrote this in 1995, in the introduction to the essay collection “The Dustbin of History.” That book is right at the midpoint of Marcus’s career bookshelf thus far: it was published twenty years after his pivotal “Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock ’n’ Roll Music” and twenty years before the two books he published this fall, “Three Songs, Three Singers, Three Nations” and “Real Life Rock: The Complete Top Ten Columns, 1986–2014.” “I think criticism, or a critical engagement with history, has a good deal to do with a willingness to be fooled,” Marcus continues, in that intro, “to take an idea too far, to bet too much on too small an object or occasion, to be caught up and even swept away.”
Marcus’s “willingness to be fooled” is something like his critical super power. His signature move is to find himself propelled, by a song’s unexpected shift in tone, by the delivery of a line or maybe even just a word, or by some unexpected cultural resonance to a famous or obscure historical event, into a newly charged landscape where everything is at stake. His long, layered sentences propel us along with him and can leave us feeling swept up, too. Later, if we listen to the record Marcus was describing—something by the Mekons, say, one of his favorite bands, or by Bob Dylan or Randy Newman—we may decide his claims don’t entirely pay off, not always. But how could they? Perhaps the best criticism requires not only a willingness to be fooled but also a readership just as eager to be caught up in the critic’s enthusiasm. Tailing Marcus as he risks foolishness, as he picks his way through the confusions and eurekas of some previously secret trace, is always worthwhile, whether the path is discovered or merely imagined.
“Mystery Train,” out this year in a sixth edition, is forty now, and for most of that time has been short-listed as “the best” or “the finest” or “most compelling” book ever written about popular music—to draw from a few decades’ worth of jacket blurbs. It is also the book that launched a thousand rock critics. I was studying journalism and already angling to write about music when I first read it, in the early nineteen-eighties. Marcus’s positioning of pop stars such as Elvis Presley and Sly Stone in conversation with literary giants such as Mark Twain and Herman Melville tumbled longstanding walls between what I’d been taught was merely throw-away stuff and what was for keeps—between who mattered and who didn’t. Today, such cultural levelling is simply part of a pop critic’s job description, but it was less common then, and impressed me deeply. I was most impressed by Marcus’ characteristically democratic assumption that Presley and Melville were cultural and political equals, and were, therefore, already in conversation with one another—having a dialogue about freedom and limits, innovation and tradition, American dreams and American obsessions, if only we would attend closely enough to catch what they were saying. And Marcus’s leaps from so-called low culture to the allegedly high were embodied in sentences at once down-on-the-ground and thrillingly performative. I quickly declared a double major, in journalism and English.
“Mystery Train” also taught me that critics could be as distinctive from one another as the artists they write about. In his introduction, Marcus singled out two fellow critics for “special thanks,” and in time their writing also became important to me (and to quite a few others). Dave Marsh was a righteous class warrior of rock criticism, brandishing a blue collar and a chip on his shoulder dwarfed only by the size of the heart on his sleeve. Robert Christgau was the self-proclaimed dean of the genre, professing a theory of pop grounded in contingency, and forever on the lookout for fun. Marcus, meanwhile, was the prophet in this white-guy trinity: in “The Shape of Things to Come: Prophecy and the American Voice” (2006), for example, he looked to film, literature, and music, trailing after national promises too grand to ever be broken but perpetually in danger of being betrayed. In this century, he’s mostly narrowed his focus to early rock and roll and its immediate descendants, and to early blues and old-time music—but he remains a cartographer, by turns, of utopia or doom. He still scours old maps for new lands.
Marcus turned seventy this summer. He is writing more books, and more quickly, than ever, with seven new titles in half a decade, each burnishing his reputation as one of the great pop-culture essayists. He has shaped previously published work into five essay collections over the years, and his short volumes on Van Morrison and the Doors are essentially essay-styled monographs. Even “Mystery Train” is comprised of thematically unified essays.
Two recent titles extend this reputation. “The History of Rock ’n’ Roll in Ten Songs,” published last year, follows his title tracks wherever they lead him, forward and backward in time, off the radio, onto the screen, and into the streets, weaving the disparate essays into a single argument—that, in rock and roll, “it is the moment when something appears as if out of nowhere … that is worth listening for.” This fall’s “Three Songs, Three Singers, Three Nations,” meanwhile, based on a series of lectures that Marcus gave at Harvard in 2013, looks to Bob Dylan’s “Ballad of Hollis Brown,” Geeshie Wiley’s “Last Kind Word Blues,” and Bascom Lamar Lunsford’s “I Wish I Was a Mole in the Ground” as the sort of “commonplace, seemingly authorless” folk songs that read as “founding documents of American identity.” These recordings can achieve this, Marcus believes, because they allow us to find our “own voices and then disappear into the crowd.”
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Both volumes find Marcus doing what he does best: hearing what you didn’t hear or nailing precisely what you did—and occasionally risking too big a bet on too small an object. In “Ten Songs,” he praises the specter of death that he hears in a version of “To Know Him Is to Love Him” by the late Amy Winehouse while dismissing the original 1958 version, by the Teddy Bears, which he finds square and embarrassingly lacking in irony. This seems to almost willfully miss the point: disliking the Teddy Bears’ record because it earnestly and sweetly expresses young love is like hating bubblegum because it can be used to blow bubbles. But this, too, is typical of Marcus. He has always tended to prefer negation and rebellion over affirmation and unity, the weird over the ordinary, the complex above the simple, the seemingly unprecedented in favor of the well-worn. In this approach, certain types of art and emotion—namely those deemed challenging or dark—are more worthy of attention than others every bit as universal and necessary but better described as fun or bright. One of rock and roll’s defining strengths, it seems to me, is the way it steamrolls such English-lit hierarchies. The music, like the people who use and love it, has proven complex enough to express emotions simply and unambiguously when that’s the way they’re experienced. Marcus bets too little, sometimes, on objects that are actually much larger than they appear.
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Both “Ten Songs” and “Three Songs” remind readers that the essay master Marcus has also mastered another form beloved by rock critics: The List. Modelled on radio countdowns and film-critic polls, and sweated over by all-in rock-and-roll fans debating what matters most about the music, The List is a rock-crit staple in part because it so readily embodies an aesthetic. The List is an essay in enumerated disguise. Marcus began one piece early in his career, “Who Put the Bomp in the Bomp De-Bomp De-Bomp?” (from “Rock and Roll Will Stand,” a 1969 anthology he edited), with two excited fans trading their all-time singles lists. “My Top Ten,” enthuses the first fan (a stand-in for Marcus, presumably) is “ ‘Like a Rolling Stone,’ ‘Eight Days a Week’ and ‘Money’ by the Beatles, ‘Play with Fire’ and ‘Tell Me’ by the Stones, ‘Little Darlin’ ’ by the Diamonds, ‘Johnny B. Goode’ by Chuck Berry, ‘The Kids Are Alright’ by the Who, ‘One Fine Day’ by the Chiffons, [and] ‘Da Do Ron Ron’ by the Crystals.” “That’s great,” replies the second fan (presumably also Marcus). “But mine’s ‘Like a Rolling Stone,’ ‘Like a Rolling Stone,’ ‘Like a Rolling Stone’….”
That passage is playful in a way that Marcus doesn’t allow himself much anymore. But then The List can be loose and brash like that, free-swinging and subjective (not to say arbitrary), and comes with playfulness practically built in. Even so, The List does require a discussion of premises and criteria to work best, and also close listening, a sense of history, and a coherent point of view. (That click-baiting scourge of our online age, the all-pronouncement-but-no-argument “listicle,” is a different animal.)
This is the sort of listing at which Marcus has excelled. In 1979, he concluded “Stranded,” a collection he edited in which rock critics wrote about their Desert Island albums, with “Treasure Island,” an annotated five-hundred-and-eighty-entry list that attempted to “rethink the story of rock ’n’ roll, in terms of spirit, not sales.” Marcus took a similar, though more abbreviated, approach for a 2007 coffee-table book, “Rock ’n’ Roll, ’39–’59,” with his “Seven Records,” a fun, funny, and astute list-with-commentary that presented a microcosmic “portrait of rock ’n’ roll” in its earliest years.” In corrective contrast to most histories of the genre, Marcus’s list is vocal-group and novelty heavy, including not only more or less predictable choices from Fats Domino and Little Richard but also both the “5” Royales’ “The Slummer the Slum” and the Fleetwoods’ “Come Softly to Me,” for example, and Buchanan and Goodman’s wacky “The Flying Saucer.”
But Marcus’s most sustained commitment to The List has been his Real Life Rock Top Ten column, which he’s been writing for three decades now. “Real Life Rock,” the collection of these columns published in October, follows the column from its Village Voice début through stints at Artforum, Salon, City Pages, Interview, and The Believer. (In November, 2014, the column relocated yet again, to barnesandnoble.com.) The “real life” in the title points to the fact that any ten objects that have captured Marcus’s attention in a particular month may become his subject. The column’s initial installment, which included an academic paper from Studies in Popular Culture_ _and a Japanese rubber Godzilla toy, established the high-low range. Through the decades, Marcus has filled his column’s slots with capsule album or concert reviews, but also with letters and e-mails from friends and readers, newspaper headlines and cable-news reports, TV ads, art exhibits, novels, magazine articles, a bit from “The Colbert Report,” a street singer he observed while visiting Portugal, and many other things besides. The column reads like a pop version of the “Newsreel” sections in John Dos Passos’s “U.S.A.” trilogy, in its variety and historical sweep—and also in the way that even the inconsequential inevitably uncovers home truths.
Sometimes, the column serves as field notes for bits that Marcus will use later, as with a 2011 entry on “Robert Johnson’s Hellhound on My Ale” that found its way into the ever-expanding “Notes and Discographies” section of “Mystery Train,” or a 1991 entry on the real-life women behind Ritchie Valens’s “Donna” and Buddy Holly’s “Peggy Sue,” which returned two decades later in “The History of Rock ’n’ Roll in Ten Songs.” The column also provides a place for sharp insights and good lines that might otherwise go unshared: “When John Legend first appeared, he seemed spontaneously generated by the Grammy Awards,” for instance, or, writing about Kacey Musgraves’s “Follow Your Arrow,” “It’s not the rebellion that sells the song, it’s the coyness.” And Marcus takes the opportunity the column gives him to restate key parts of his critical approach. Writing about a collection of the critic Robert Warshow’s work, “The Immediate Experience,” in 2002, for instance, Marcus writes, “ ‘I am not fooled,’ this man says, [but] critics have to be willing to be fooled.”
Many of pop music’s defining charms—a hook or melody you can’t shake from your head, a good beat you can dance to—are rarely mentioned in “Real Life Rock,” and never as values worthy unto themselves. Marcus has little apparent use for merely good records—or even for great ones, unless he hears in them something that sounds like nothing he’s ever heard before. Every time a tribute album comes up in a “Real Life Rock” entry, he tells us once again that tribute albums are terrible. He seizes seemingly every chance through the years to remind us of how much he loathes the Lucinda Williams’s singing, and of how much he admires Bob Dylan’s. The humility and daring necessary to adopt “a willingness to be fooled” as a critical ideal inevitably walk hand in critical hand, it seems, with an almost imperious trust in one’s own ear. With its profound insights and pat dismissals, “Real Life Rock” gives us Greil Marcus at both his best and not, but always on the lookout for the next big bet. As Marcus himself writes in one entry, about a collection of early blues he admires, and to which he feels he can’t possibly stop listening, Marcus’s criticism is “a flurry of fragments, leaving you grasping for a way to follow the trail.”
Greil Marcus has written many books, including Mystery Train, Lipstick Traces, The Old, Weird America, and The History of Rock 'n' Roll in Ten Songs. With Werner Sollors he is the editor of A New Literary History of America. He was born in the Middle West, in San Francisco and lives in Oakland, CA.
Marcus, Greil UNDER THE RED WHITE AND BLUE Yale Univ. (NonFiction None) $26.00 5, 19 ISBN: 978-0-300-22890-8
The legendary rock critic digs into one of American literature’s cornerstones.
This ambitious, extended essay on America as seen through the “gravitational pull” of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel is about how The Great Gatsby “exists on its own terms—as a commercial product, meant to make money and elevate a reputation, and as a story, an expose and an illumination of the moral life of its characters, the country they inhabit, and the legacy the country’s discoverers and founders left for them to reckon with or ignore.” Less than a month before the publication date, Fitzgerald wanted to change the title to “Under the Red White and Blue.” Marcus asks: “What is it that Americans share?” The author, a master of juxtaposition, draws provocative, unexpected connections among literature, music, and movies. He uses quotes from W.E.B. Du Bois, Edmund Wilson, Lady Gaga, Barbara Jordan, and Bruce Springsteen to assess patriotism in America. He then discusses Moby-Dick, a novel “that, in America, defines the contours of a common imagination as much as anything America has ever produced.” Indeed, “in the American story, Ahab is always out there.” Marcus traces the Gatsby effect as it later weaved its way into the “American fabric” in books by Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Ross MacDonald, and Walter Mosley as well as, perhaps most significantly, Philip Roth’s The Human Stain. Instead of an ordinary plot summary, Marcus draws on Andy Kauffman’s quirky Gatsby reading on Saturday Night Live in 1978 and an extended discussion of Gatz, the six-hour public theatrical reading. After an insightful examination of the historical “ferment that fed the energies of the decade into Fitzgerald’s book,” Marcus goes to the movies. He dismisses the “enervating” Robert Redford version in favor of Baz Luhrmann’s 2013 edition. The author is much taken with Leonardo DiCaprio’s acting and Tobey McGuire’s sensitive narration.
Astute, challenging, and far-reaching: There’s much to chew on in Marcus’ disquisition on Gatsby’s legacy.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2020 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
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"Marcus, Greil: UNDER THE RED WHITE AND BLUE." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Mar. 2020. Gale General OneFile, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A617192958/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=7109745f. Accessed 8 Apr. 2020.
Greil Marcus. Yale Univ., $26 (176p) ISBN 978-0-300-22890-8
In an idiosyncratic book that occasionally soars, critic Marcus (Real Life Rock) traces The Great Gatsby's impact on America's popular imagination. Marcus spends much of his time on various works based on or inspired by the novel: stage plays, Hollywood films, live readings, Saturday Night Live skits, and even a billboard in F. Scott Fitzgerald's birthplace of St. Paul, Minn. He also discusses responses to Fitzgerald's work from other writers, such as Raymond Chandler and Ross Macdonald; Fitzgerald's mostly ill-starred Hollywood writing career; and parallels between Gatsby and Moby-Dick. In one of the strongest sections, Marcus discusses The 7 Lively Arts by Fitzgerald's friend Gilbert Seldes, a 1924 analysis of the popular culture of the Roaring Twenties era, which the novel now epitomizes. In another strong entry, Marcus incisively critiques the botched 1949 Gatsby film starring Alan Ladd, "one of the most enervating movies ever made." However, the amount of space he grants to summaries of performances or movies, though invariably well-written, sometimes overwhelms the book's critical component. If the many facts and ideas gathered by Marcus sometimes feel like too daunting a pile of glittering cultural detritus, taken in small amounts they do result in an entertaining meander for Fitzgerald fans. (May)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2020 PWxyz, LLC
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"Under the Red, White and Blue: Patriotism, Disenchantment and the Stubborn Myth of 'The Great Gatsby'." Publishers Weekly, vol. 267, no. 9, 2 Mar. 2020, p. 55. Gale General OneFile, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A616992664/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=466a9e03. Accessed 8 Apr. 2020.
Three Songs, Three Singers, Three Nations. By Greil Marcus. (William E. Massey Sr. Lectures in the History of American Civilization, 2013.) Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015. [164 p. ISBN 9780674187085. $19.95.] Illustrations, bibliographic references, index.
Three Songs, Three Singers, Three Nations is an adaptation of the series of William E. Massey Sr. Lectures in the History of American Civilization at Harvard that Greil Marcus delivered in 201S. The compact volume consists of three chapters, each an examination of a different song from American folk music. He focuses on a single performance of each piece, but puts them in the context of other interpretations of the work. Marcus acts as storyteller more than a lecturer. Each of the three impressionistic chapters leisurely unwinds. The introduction to each section is so extended that Marcus induces the reader into wondering where he is going and what his point is. Marcus finally makes his purpose explicit a full twenty-four pages into the book: "I am looking at three commonplace, seemingly authorless songs as bedrock, founding documents of American history" (p. 24).
Marcus sets the scene for the first chapter, "Inflection," in the 1960s folk revival with the backdrop of the Cold War. In 1963, John Henry Faulk was the once-blacklisted host of the television program Folk Songs and More Folk Songs! He narrates the story of American history as told through folk song, with an undercurrent of rebellion against the contemporaneous anticommunist impingement of freedom. Faulk leads to Bob Dylan's performance of "Ballad of Hollis Brown." Marcus describes many facets of the Dylan presentation, including the accompanying visuals and where in the lyrics he places his vocal emphasis. He also looks at the song more broadly. Dylan borrowed the melody from "Pretty Polly," an old murder ballad, and turned it into a murder ballad of his own about a desperate South Dakota farmer who shoots his destitute family, then himself. Marcus offers a brief history of murder ballads, and describes how the work sounds like something from earlier in our country's history than a current composition. He focuses on the version released on Dylan's third album, the 1964 The Times They Are A-Changin ', but also examines the subtle variations in other performances by Dylan.
Next, Marcus turns his attention to 1930's "Last Kind Words Blues" by Geeshie Wiley. The song was one of only six ever recorded by Wiley under her own name or with her musical partner L.V. Thomas, both guitarists and singers. The main theme for the chapter, "Disappearance and Forgetting," is about tracking the mysterious origins and paths of the song and the musicians. For decades, it was a source of intrigue for blues enthusiasts because it was tied to questions about the source of the blues, and because die single was a prized rarity for record collectors. Marcus quotes a 1961 interview with Thomas that had long been unpublished, where she recalls a time before the blues existed, implying that she witnessed the birth. The lyrics are that of a folk-lyric song "where phrases, lines, couplets, or whole verses migrate from tune to tune, from blacks to whites and back again, without regard for subject or locale" (p. 69). Wiley and Thomas's guitar work bears traces of other early blues songs, leading to questions of whether they originated or echoed those first sounds. The song's ambiguous point of view leads to an ambiguous meaning, and the mystery is compounded by the few details available about the songs' creators. The track was recorded for Paramount Records, and the chapter includes a concise description of the operations of the label, leading readers to the more extensive coverage in the endnotes, making this book a handy supplement for those libraries fortunate enough to own the recently-issued Paramount Records box sets.
Finally, Marcus offers a meditation on "I Wish I Was a Mole in the Ground'' as recorded by song-catcher Bascom Lamar Lunsford. The theme of the chapter entitled "World Upside Down" is the unfathomable meaning of the lyrics, but also the song's open-ended structure as a hallmark of folk music. He describes Lunsford's distinctive banjo playing and how he came to be revered during the 1960s folk revival. He notes it as an early example of electrical recording with microphones. Lunsford's peripatetic lifestyle led to his work as a "song hunter" in Appalachia. Marcus quotes Walter Benjamin on the concept of authorless folk songs. Many have heard or created endless variations on the lyrics, either through mishearing or misremembering other versions, or by using the framework to intentionally put their own mark on it.
Each chapter includes an examination of how others have interpreted each song. For "Hollis Brown," Marcus discusses everyone from Nina Simone in 1965 to a more recent cover by Swedish death-metal band Entombed. Considering Jack White's involvement in the Paramount reissue, it is little surprise that he recorded a version of "Last Kind Words Blues," which he did with the Dex Romweber Duo; Marcus describes White's guitar work as "buzzard sounds" (p. 85). But Marcus also talks to members of the Mekons about how they attempted to wrap their brains around the enigmatic piece and put their own spin on it. Rhiannon Giddens also took a stab at it, and the song inspired a movie and a book. The main point of the chapter "I Wish I Was a Mole in the Ground" is how mutable the song is in different hands.
Marcus, a veteran, revered music critic, has already published two books expressly about Dylan. With this work, he finds a roundabout way of creating a third. The first chapter explicitly focuses on Dylan, but the iconic musician crops up in the other two as well. Dylan gets a brief mention when Marcus groups Dylan's "Hollis Brown" with Wiley's "Last Kind Words Blues" as examples of folk songs based on made-up stories in contrast to the real Stagger Lee or Frankie and Johnny. Dylan looms throughout the Lunsford chapter as one of the interpreters of the song Lunsford recorded as an example of an expert on the mid-century folk revival.
Karl Hagstrom Miller pegged Marcus's goals in a review of Bob Dylan by Greil Marcus: Writings 1968-2010. Using a tongue-in-cheek structure in "How to Write about Bob Dylan: A Step-by-Step Guide," Miller reviewed Marcus's Dylan book and two by other writers. Among Miller's instructions and comments: "Express the impact that Dylan had on you by insisting the story of the man and his music is really the story of the nation ... Marcus is the master of this rule" (Karl Hagstrom Miller, "How to Write About Bob Dylan: A Step-by-Step Guide," Journal Of Popular Music Studies 23, no. 3 [September 2011]: 36270). Marcus leaves himself out of Three Songs, but he does make the case for each of these songs telling a piece of the story of America. These are rambling reflections, drawing the reader in, rather than a series of highly structured persuasive essays. There are no billboards that signpost thesis statements with blinking lights. The book works best as a supplement to more straightforward works, adding a new point of view to the broad picture of American folk music as well as detailed studies of the three specific recordings.
There is one particularly troubling aspect of the book, however: the fictional final section of the chapter "Disappearance and Forgetting." After devoting much attention to how little is known about Geeshie Wiley, Marcus concludes the chapter with details about the latter part of her life, placing her Zelig-like among actual events such as a Farm Security Administration photo published in Life magazine (p. 94), living with Frankie Baker who inspired the Frankie and Johnny songs (pp. 96-97), and meeting a young Jimi Hendrix in the audience at an Elvis Presley concert, leading to her teaching new chords to the future guitar master (pp. 97-98). Only in an unnumbered endnote does Marcus acknowledge, "Everything in the last section of this chapter is made up, but some of the characters are real, albeit in mostly fictional roles" (p. 104). Librarians should have legitimate qualms about shelving this among nonfiction research materials, hoping that anyone who relied on it had checked the endnotes to discover that a ten-page portion was a fabrication. One can appreciate the author's use of a literary device while simultaneously shuddering at the thought of scholars unwittingly citing these fantasies as facts. No matter how eloquently he waxes, no matter how detailed his description of the minutiae of each song or how insightful his analysis, one cannot get past Marcus's betrayal of the readers' trust.
MARCI COHEN
Boston University
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 Music Library Association, Inc.
http://www.musiclibraryassoc.org
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Cohen, Marci. "Three Songs, Three Singers, Three Nations." Notes, vol. 73, no. 2, 2016, p. 273+. Gale General OneFile, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A472473219/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=69962089. Accessed 8 Apr. 2020.
Marcus, Grell. Real life rock: the complete top ten columns, 1986-2014. Yale, 2015. 586p Index afp ISBN 9780300196641 cloth, $35.00
(cc) 53-3010
ML3534
2015-935013 MARC
Marcus (who teaches at Univ. of California, Berkeley, and Graduate Center, CUNY) is a popular culture pundit and author of influential works, including The History of Rock 'n Roll in Ten Songs (CH, May'15, 52-4666). Here he collects columns he published over three decades in The Village Voice, Arforum, Salon, City Pages, Interview, and The Believer. The focus is broader than "rock": each column's ten brief entries explore a range of topics, for example music in general, art, prose, zines, film, advertisements, political observations, and overheard comments. The chronology reveals, in breadth not depth, an impressionist vision, and a detailed index (c. 4,400 entries) affords easy access to specific moments. The journey traverses alleyways as well as thoroughfares, exploring popular, obscure, esoteric, underground, and influential cultural objects that sparked Marcus's praise or dismay, including Dylan and Springsteen but also Trailer Bride and Hissyfits. Brief entries are sometimes throwaways--Los Lobos's album By the Light of the Moon is "Fine. But not superfine"--but more often insightful: " Tonight's the Night disguised as Harvest--some trick." A half-page exploration of an Absolut Vodka ad succinctly examines the invasive nature of music, technology, and subversive media delivery. This is a provocative, if not required, read for those interned in journalism, sociology, and popular culture. Summing Up: ** Recommended. All readers.--R. A. Aken, University of Kentucky
Aken, R.A.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 American Library Association CHOICE
http://www.ala.org/acrl/choice/about
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Aken, R.A. "Marcus, Greil. Real life rock: the complete top ten columns, 1986-2014." CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, vol. 53, no. 7, Mar. 2016, p. 1028+. Gale General OneFile, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A445735430/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=0b9f6af2. Accessed 8 Apr. 2020.