Customer Reviews

Graceland: Going Home with Elvis

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Elvis was the unique product of a very specific time and place; a cultural expression of that sweaty, hardscrabble slice of Mississippi River Delta biracial culture which has produced so much of the authentic in American music.
The singer's unusual and deep attachment to his context is well understood in this perceptive biography, whose author views and interprets Presley through his homes, from the shotgun shack in East Tupelo to the "Peckerwood Palace" of Graceland. Highly readable and of value to students of contemporary American culture, but committed Elvis fans will not be comforted by this unblinking examination of the King and his world.

(The "score" rating is an ineradicable feature of the page. This reviewer does not "score" books.)

Truly great book on the myth of Elvis Presley and also
about the history of the past in the United States.
We can understand in a better way what Graceland truly mean
to Elvis...
A superficial time-line concerning his life is also a great
source of informations about the man behind the star...
Edith Robitaille from Quebec, Canada.

The book generally present Elvis and his surroundings as seedy, degenerate. The 35 small, black and white illustrations, with their distorted dimensions, enhance this image.

I thought there might be a lot of information on Elvis's various homes. I was disappointed. The author wanders far afield of things Elvis. There is a significant amount of coverage on the homes of other celebrities, and there is an obsession with external columns. One chapter is devoted to William Faulkner. The final chapter describes the author's trip home from Memphis to her home in Minnesota.

I was surprised at the 12 pages devoted to "Sources". The book's text did not suggest extensive homework on Elvis, but the "Acknowledgments" give credit to four grad students for their assistance.

The page count breaks down as follow: Table of Contents - 2, text - 242 (including 16 chapters and an introduction), Sources -12, and Acknowledgments - 2.

The prose came across as meandering, often depressing, but eloquent blather, packaged under the Elvis name to sell copies. Perhaps writing in this matter purges the author of her own frustrations. Despite it's overall negativity, it was still interesting in its perspective.

My son brought this book home as part of a school project and I absentmindedly picked it up and started reading. It really hooked me from the start and I ended up reading it cover to cover in just a couple of days.

The author has a great way of meandering from subject to subject so that the book encompasses much more than just facts about Graceland. It studies how the houses that we live in represent where we have come from and where we are going, not just as individuals but as a culture and a country.

The book also looks honestly at Elvis Presley's life, without wallowing in the uglier aspects of his life and death.