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Greil Marcus
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Greil Marcus (born 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 much broader framework of culture and politics than is customary in pop music journalism.
Marcus was born in San Francisco. He earned an undergraduate degree in American Studies from the University of California, Berkeley, where he also did graduate work in political science. He has been a rock critic and columnist for Rolling Stone magazine (where he was the first reviews editor, at $30 a week) and other publications, including Creem, the Village Voice and Artforum.
His 1975 book, Mystery Train, re-defined the parameters of rock music criticism.
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Encyclopedia
Greil Marcus (born 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 much broader framework of culture and politics than is customary in pop music journalism.
Marcus was born in San Francisco. He earned an undergraduate degree in American Studies from the University of California, Berkeley, where he also did graduate work in political science. He has been a rock critic and columnist for Rolling Stone magazine (where he was the first reviews editor, at $30 a week) and other publications, including Creem, the Village Voice and Artforum.
His 1975 book, Mystery Train, re-defined the parameters of rock music criticism. The book places rock 'n'roll within the context of American cultural archetypes, from Moby-Dick to Jay Gatsby to Stagger Lee. Marcus's "recognition of the unities in the American imagination that already exist" inspired countless rock scribes
His next book, Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the 20th Century (1989, developed from an earlier essay), stretched his trademark riffing across a century of Western civilization. Positing punk rock as a transhistorical cultural phenomenon, Marcus examined philosophical connections between entities as diverse as the Sex Pistols, the Dadaists, and medieval heretics. From 1983 to 1989, Marcus was on the Board of Directors for the National Book Critics Circle.
In 1991, Marcus published Dead Elvis, a collection of writings about Elvis Presley, and in 1993 published Ranters and Crowd Pleasers, an examination of post-punk political pop. In 1997, using old Dylan bootlegs as a starting point, Marcus dissected the American subconscious with Invisible Republic: Bob Dylan's Basement Tapes.
He currently writes the "Elephant Dancing" column for Interview, "Real Life Top 10" for Believer and occasionally teaches graduate courses in American Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. His latest book, The Shape of Things to Come: Prophecy in the American Voice, was recently published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Bibliography
- Rock & Roll Will Stand (1969), edited anthology
- Double Feature: Movies & Politics (1972), co-authored with Michael Goodwin
- Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock 'n' Roll Music (1975, fifth revision March 25, 2008)
- Stranded: Rock and Roll for a Desert Island (1979, editor and contributor)
- Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the 20th Century (1989), a book on 20th century avant-garde art movements like Dadaism, Lettrist International and Situationist International and their influence on late 20th century countercultures and The Sex Pistols and Punk Movement.
- Dead Elvis: A Chronicle of a Cultural Obsession (1991), about the phenomenon of Elvis Presley in the years since his death
- In the Fascist Bathroom: Punk in Pop Music, 1977-1992 (1993, published in the US as Ranters and Crowd Pleasers)
- The Dustbin of History (1995)
- Invisible Republic: Bob Dylan's Basement Tapes (1998; also published as The Old, Weird America: Bob Dylan's Basement Tapes, 2001), an account of American folk culture, seen through Bob Dylan's Basement Tapes.
- Double Trouble: Bill Clinton and Elvis Presley in a Land of No Alternatives (2001)
- The Manchurian Candidate (2002)
- The Rose & the Briar: Death, Love and Liberty in the American Ballad (2004, co-edited with Sean Wilentz)
- Like a Rolling Stone: Bob Dylan at the Crossroads (2005), a "biography" of the Dylan song
- The Shape of Things to Come: Prophecy in the American Voice (2006)
External links
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- "", essay by Marcus on memory and on his father, Greil Gerstley, who died in World War II.
- "" at rockcritics.com
- "The Shape of Things to Come" at fora.TV
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