"How much history can be communicated by pressure on a guitar
string?" Robert Palmer wondered in Deep Blues. Greil Marcus answers
here: more than we will ever know. It is the history in the riff,
in the movie or novel or photograph, in the actor's pose or
critic's posturing--in short, the history in cultural
happenstance--that Marcus reveals here, exposing along the way the
distortions and denials that keep us oblivious if not immune to its
lessons. Whether writing about the Beat Generation or Umberto Eco,
Picasso's Guernica or the massacre in Tiananmen Square, The
Manchurian Candidate or John Wayne's acting, Eric Ambler's
antifascist thrillers or Camille Paglia, Marcus uncovers the
histories embedded in our cultural moments and acts, and shows how,
through our reading of the truths our culture tells and those it
twists and conceals, we situate ourselves in that history and in
the world. Rarely has a history lesson been so exhilarating. With
the startling insights and electric style that have made him our
foremost writer on American music, Marcus brings back to life the
cultural events that have defined us and our time, the social
milieu in which they took place, and the individuals engaged in
them. As he does so, we see that these cultural instances--as lofty
as The Book of J, as humble as a TV movie about Jan and Dean, as
fleeting as a few words spoken at the height of the Berkeley Free
Speech Movement, as enduring as a Paleolithic painting--often have
more to tell us than the master-narratives so often passed off as
faultless representations of the past. Again and again Marcus
skewers the widespread assumption that history exists only in the
past, that it is behind us, relegated to the dustbin. Here we see
instead that history is very much with us, being made and unmade
every day, and unless we recognize it our future will be as cramped
and impoverished as our present sense of the past.
General
Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate?
Let us know about it.
Does this product have an incorrect or missing image?
Send us a new image.
Is this product missing categories?
Add more categories.
Review This Product
No reviews yet - be the first to create one!
Welcome to Loot.co.za!
Sign in / Register |Wishlists & Gift Vouchers |Help | Advanced search
(1)
(4)
