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Title: Double Trouble: Bill Clinton and Elvis Presley in a Land of No Alternatives by Greil Marcus ISBN: 0312420412 Publisher: Picador Pub. Date: 2001 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3
Rating: 3
Summary: Connecting the dots in 20th century pop culture
Comment: Although his subject matter (from the promised Clinton/Elvis thing to Kurt Cobain, Bob Dylan, Whitewater and more) is diverse and entertaining, Marcus takes an academic tone that sometimes failed to draw me in.
Still, he's well versed in politics and pop culture, and able to draw thought-provoking connections between seemingly disparate topics. Marcus is master of the insightful bizarre trivia detail - like the fact that Clinton-accuser Paula Jones' husband played the ghost of Elvis in the 1989 movie "Mystery Train". Like music, sometimes it feels forced, and sometimes it all comes together.
As someone who remembers Cobain much more clearly than Elvis, I found the book was a great crash course in some of the themes that influenced both today's rock stars and politicians.
As rock/pop culture criticism, it actually makes an interesting companion piece for the Lester Bangs anthology I just finished reading ("Psychotic Reactions & Carburator Dung" - interestingly enough, it was edited by Marcus, Bangs' former Creem cohort). Except that Bangs puts a lot more passion into his rants, while Marcus seems determined to stand back and make observations. Ultimately, that tone left me standing on the sidelines as well.
Rating: 3
Summary: Clinton As Elvis? I Don't Think So.
Comment: In Double Trouble: Bill Clinton And Elvis Presley In A Land Of No Alternatives, Greil Marcus examines a metaphor suggested by, among others, filmmaker Oliver Stone and New York Times columnist Frank Rich: Bill Clinton as Elvis Presley. Woven in & out of this central thread are the stories of other Americans living in the spotlight during the Clinton years: among them, Bob Dylan, Kurt Cobain, Allen Ginsberg, and Hillary Clinton. It's an interesting idea, and certainly (on the face of it, at least) no less tenable a springboard for a book than the theses that any of Marcus' other books are based on. There's only one small problem: it doesn't wash.
The quality of Marcus' writing isn't an issue here: stylistically, I'd put him up against anyone working today, and his erudition remains astonishing (reading him, I frequently find myself asking: "Is there a book this guy HASN'T read? A piece of music he HASN'T heard?"). Nor is it the individual chapters: many of them are great - opening up vistas in music, films, and politics you hadn't imagined were there.
No, the difficulty lies in Marcus' conclusion: simply put, I find the notion that Clinton approached Elvis Presley as a force for cultural liberation absurd. Clinton is obviously a very intelligent man and was an extraordinarily charismatic leader, but at the end of the day, he was just another politican. Elvis Presley broke - exploded - American culture in half. I don't think Clinton, as either president or cultural leader, can make a claim half so big.
Rating: 5
Summary: bringing up the average
Comment: This book should probably rate somewhere around 3 or 4 stars. It isn't Marcus's best--that would be MYSTERY TRAIN or LIPSTICK TRACES--but anything by this fine critic is a whole lot better than the average nonfiction tripe out there (e.g., another cash cow "case" against one or both of the Clintons).
Granted, the connection between Elvis and BC is no stronger than the connection between, well, me and Mahatma Gandhi, but if you hold a magnifiying glass up close enough to a watermelon and squint your eyes, you can see an image of the Virgin Mary. And a number of pieces collected under this misleading title are not concerned, even in a Marcusian "world in a leaf of grass" way, with either Elvis or Clinton.
Having said this, no one understands the relationship between rock and American culture, past and present, better than Marcus. He is always wise, trenchant, and--though sometimes overly mystifying--strongly moral. As I read Marcus I always think, "This guy's on my side; he's saying what I would like to say if I could think of the right words." This applies to a lesser Marcus work (like this one) as well as the major ones (and he's about due for one sometime soon).
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Title: Dead Elvis: A Chronicle of a Cultural Obsession by Greil Marcus ISBN: 0674194225 Publisher: Harvard Univ Pr Pub. Date: 1999 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
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Title: Elvis Culture: Fans, Faith & Image (Culture America) by Erika Lee Doss ISBN: 0700609482 Publisher: Univ Pr of Kansas Pub. Date: 1999 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: Elvis Presley: A Penguin Life (Penguin Lives) by Bobbie Ann Mason ISBN: 0670031747 Publisher: Viking Press Pub. Date: 2003 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title:Bob Dylan Live 1975 (The Bootleg Series Volume 5) ASIN: B00006NT3H Publisher: Sony Pub. Date: 26 November, 2002 List Price(USD): $19.98 Comparison N/A, buy it from Amazon for $14.99 |
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