Probing - at times beyond the pale - ponderings on Elvis as the
ultimate American icon. Fourteen years dead, Elvis lives on - at
least in the exuberant critical imagination of Marcus (Lipstick
Traces, 1989; Mystery Train, 1975), who in this intemperate but
dazzling hodgepodge of essays and commentaries (some seen in
earlier form in Rolling Stone, The Village Voice, etc.) finds the
singer to be nothing less than an example of "the necessity
existing in every culture to produce a perfect, all-inclusive
metaphor for itself" This claim and others (e.g., that Elvis
"signified" an "unfathomable multiplicity"; that, like Moby-Dick
and Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address, one of Elvis's TV spots
offered "a fantasy of what the deepest and most extreme
possibilities and dangers of our national identity are") at first
seem the wispiest flights of fancy - but they gain flesh as Marcus
nourishes them with an astonishing array of testimony to Elvis's
stature as an American legend. It's not only the bestselling Elvis
books the author critiques; the media's Elvismania he despairs of;
the Elvis imitators and fans he marvels at (with a knowing
appreciation of their religious fervor: "The identification of EMs
with Jesus has been a secret theme...at least since 1956"); above
all, it's the hundreds of posthumous EMs-references he nets from
the American cultural jungles and here pins to the page like so
many butterflies. Culled from comic-strips, street-rumors, posters,
record art, song lyrics, tabloid headlines, novels, interviews,
public addresses, etc., they give some backbone at least to
Marcus's overarching claim "that 'So much for EMs Presley' is a
sentence no serious person has yet been able to write with a
straight face." With 50 b&w and 10 color illustrations
syncopated throughout the text (which itself features numerous
typefaces), it's a graphically as well as intellectually
stimulating foray into the farthest reaches of Elvisdom. (Kirkus
Reviews)
In life, Elvis Presley went from childhood poverty to stardom,
from world fame to dissipation and early death. As Greil Marcus
shows in this remarkable book, Presley's journey after death takes
him even further, pushing him beyond his own frontiers to merge
with the American public consciousness--and the American
subconscious.
As he listens in on the public conversation that recreates Elvis
after death, Marcus tracks the path of Presley's resurrection. He
grafts together scattered fragments of the eclectic
dialogue--snatches of movies and music, books and newspapers,
photographs, posters, cartoons--and amazes us with not only what
America has been saying as it raises its late king, but also what
this strange obsession with a dead Elvis can tell us about America
itself.
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