An absorbing and eye-opening meditation on Elvis Presley's life--since his death. In 18 essays illustrated with more than 60 photos and line drawings, Marcus shows how Elvis remains alive in the cultural imagination of our place and time, and how the King's vitality has intensified in direct proportion to the obsession with his memory.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
In this consistently amazing analysis, Marcus proposes that rock king Elvis Presley (1935-1977) has been more important dead than alive and in the process makes readers care about far more cultural trivia than they might have thought possible. A philosopher and critic with a novelist's passion and creativity (his Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the 20th Century was dauntingly dense but compelling), Marcus writes with flash and style. Scanning the American scene, he finds Elvis omnipresent, from the cult TV show Twin Peaks (he killed Laura Palmer) to the star's life, which to many embodied the American dream. While the premise may seem far-fetched, Marcus's assessment of the American psyche and the 60 disturbing illustrations, including the cover of the album Disgraceland by the rock group Elvis Hitler, bear him out. Perhaps "nothing but a hound dog" in life, in memory Elvis proves very much more. 40,000 first printing; author tour; first serial to Interview.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Kirkus Reviews
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 Elvis with Jesus has been a secret theme...at least since 1956''); above all, it's the hundreds of posthumous Elvis-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 Elvis 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. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The best cultural criticism on Elvis ever. End of story,
By A Customer
This review is from: Dead Elvis: A Chronicle of a Cultural Obsession (Paperback)
Greil Marcus's collection of randow essays and pieces is still more cohesive, fascinating, intelligent and amazing that most books written on Elvis Presley. Quite simply, Marcus is one of the best writers operating today. When writing about EP, most cultural critics don't have the musical background, and most biographers (save Peter Guralnick & Dave Marsh) don't have the philosophical insight. Marcus does and he isn't afraid to flex his intellectual muscle and still be funny and accessible. If you could only own 2 books on Elvis Presley, it would be this and Peter Guralnick's "Last Train To Memphis."
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
somewhere in the middle --,
This review is from: Dead Elvis: A Chronicle of a Cultural Obsession (Paperback)
I found this book engaging enough. It is not an Elvis biography, more a commentary on pop culture and perception. Marcus is a solid writer and his points are well-founded, especially the chapter in which he deconstructs Goldman's scathing bio 'Elvis'. As another reviewer has suggested, you will need to know some about Elvis' story before you get your head around everything in this book. Having said that, it's not as grave as that reviewer made it out to be. I don't consider myself an Elvis follower by any stretch and I didn't feel out of place understanding what Marcus was conveying. A solid, quick read that even the most casual of Elvis fans will enjoy.
5 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
absolutely impenetrable,
By Nysocboy (Wisconsin) - See all my reviews
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Dead Elvis: A Chronicle of a Cultural Obsession (Paperback)
I have a Ph.D., and most of the time I had no idea what Marcus was talking about. Not because of the academic jargon -- there is little or none. Because he kept dropping in names of obscure punk rock groups or fan mags or ezines and expecting me to know all about them, he kept starting discussions in the middle, and most infuriating, he assumed that readers positively worshipped Elvis, so if he alluded to what happened in Tupelo in 1957, or Elvis' relationship with his cousins, we would nod and say "oh, sure." Casual readers, beware -- in order to understand this book, you need to have read at least a dozen biographies of Elvis, watch all of his movies a dozen times, and have every word of every song he ever wrote memorized. I conclude that it's not a cultural obsession at all, to anyone but the author.
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