The Shape of Things to Come: Prophecy and the American Voice (Paperback)

~ Greil Marcus (Author)
Key Phrases: fat trout, lost republic, Laura Palmer, Dos Passos, Twin Peaks (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Marcus plumbs the depth and breadth of American exceptionalism through his unique lens of cultural criticism, forging often astounding links between people, places, works of art and miscellaneous phenomena, as he has in most of his previous nine books. The independent scholar posits that the United States of America is a cultural construction, grounded in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Without those bedrocks, Marcus believes, the nation would be "little more than a collection of buildings and people who have no special reason to speak to each other, and nothing to say." Marcus builds his own erudite vision upon John Winthrop's 1630 speech "A Modell of Christian Charity," Abraham Lincoln's second inaugural address in 1865, Martin Luther King Jr.'s 1963 exhortation from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, the later novels of Philip Roth, the films of David Lynch and the music of David Thomas with his band Pere Ubu. More than most books, Marcus's latest tour de force is quite likely to divide readers into two camps: those who find it brilliant and those who find it baffling. (Sept.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

Marcus, perhaps America's most imaginative social critic, here attempts to define America as "a story told more in art than in politics" by yoking together the works of several disparate artists and linking them to three speeches: John Winthrop's 1630 sermon "A Modell of Christian Charity," Lincoln's Second Inaugural, and Martin Luther King's address to the March on Washington. American exceptionalism, Marcus posits, can be traced in stories as wide-ranging as Philip Roth's late Zuckerman novels, the films of David Lynch, the grade-Z film noir Detour, the "avant garage" music of Pere Ubu singer David Thomas, the poems of Allen Ginsberg, and Steve Darnall and Alex Ross' graphic novel Uncle Sam (1997). Marcus has tried a similar trick in previous works, most successfully in Mystery Train (1975), which traced rock 'n' roll from past strains of Americana, musical and other. This time Marcus sews the threads together but fails to produce a wearable garment. But if the book is disappointingly inchoate, the reading is consistently exhilarating, thanks to Marcus' vast understanding of American culture. Gordon Flagg
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Picador (August 21, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312426429
• ISBN-13: 978-0312426422
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #95,744 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Greil Marcus asks: Does America Exist?, October 21, 2006

By	Gregory Mills "Greg" (Berkeley) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Shape of Things to Come: Prophecy and the American Voice (Hardcover)

At first blush, pop Zarathustra Greil Marcus's latest book, The Shape of Things to Come, looks like something cooked up by a Sarah Lawrence undergrad in an end-of-term panic. According to Marcus, America exists only as a cultural construct coalesced from the words of our national prophets--people like Martin Luther King, Philip Roth, David Lynch, John Dos Passos, Pere Ubu's Dave Thomas, and ... Bill Pullman(!). But while showing us how to unlock the mystery of America by loading up an Amazon shopping cart, Marcus manages a wild-eyed grandeur that out-argues any co-ed essay. Analyzing these prophets' works, from the conflicted professor of The Human Stain to the menacing, eyebrowless dwarf of Lost Highway, Marcus gains insight into the nature of these United States: America doesn't really exist, at least not as other nations exist. Rather, the country is a collection of vanguard ideas, weirdo prophetic narratives that come to life when you and your neighbors invest in them. The book is a rambling mess--but it's a beautiful and seductive one.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant writing stye, dazzling command of popular culture, depressing and depressed view of America, October 18, 2006

By	Craig Matteson (Ann Arbor, MI) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)

This review is from: The Shape of Things to Come: Prophecy and the American Voice (Hardcover)

Greil Marcus has made his bones as a journalist, critic, historian, and his own genus of philosopher of pop music and related cultural issues. His writing style is very much his own. It is quite mannered, and feels to me to be much like musical improvisation (but is carefully worked out) mixed with a more or less leftist political sensibilities and pessimistic dismissal of political and historical America as the cause of all misery and pain in the world mixed in with a spoonful or two of ADHD.

For Marcus, there is no authority to appeal to; nothing outside of oneself to serve or protect. His whole universe is a collection of images, sounds, and words that come to mind, are linked in some way and that linkage and presentation creates or gives voice to some emotionally needy sense of reality. He seems to have taken in the lessons of deconstructionist philosophy. If there are only personal narratives with no possibility of objective communication, why not just riff and try to get the reader to agree with and share your feelings about things by sharing common images and sounds. Figures in literature or the movies are just as valid as any historical figure, since both are constructed and presented to us by some author communicating his or her own narrative through those characters.

Yeah, I know.

This book consists of seven essays. The conceit of the book is that there are voices in America's past that vibrate sympathetically to our time and that as we hear those voices we can see the reality of our own time, terrible as it is. These past voices are our true prophets and their artistic works are the true prophecies.

I have to say that I am quite impressed with Marcus' writing style. It is an interesting achievement and his broad knowledge of popular culture and command of its artifacts is quite dazzling. While much of each essay reads like sparks of ideas flashing intensely and quickly before our eyes, there are also small periods of discourse that go on for a few paragraphs. But these are more about telling the story of something he is using as illustration rather than presentation of any argument. Because, again, if all there can be is personal narrative, it makes not sense to try and use logic, reason, evidence, and conclusion (you know, the tools that enabled the human race to leave the caves and trees). All there can be is persuasion and emotional affinity, a redoubt of the well schooled but poorly educated.

For this author, America is past decline, it is less than a failure, it was a promise never fulfilled but still owed, and our ideals nothing more than comforting bedtime stories (pg. 260). In an extended riff on Steve Darnall's 1997 comic book "Uncle Sam", Marcus conflates the battlefields of our Revolutionary War with the Andersonville prison camp of the Civil war with the 1832 massacre of the Blackhawks by the U. S. Army with the "massacre of union workers by private police at the Rouge River Ford plant in Dearborn, Michigan a hundred years after that" (pg. 262).

Well, the only problem with that is that the "Battle of the Overpass" did not result in any massacre. Yes, UAW officers and workers were seriously hurt, but no one died. The pictures in the Detroit News made it a national event, but its brutality was not in the league of the Homestead strike of 1892 where ten died or the death of about 20 in the Ludlow coal strike in Colorado. So, why does he pick the Rouge River? Was it the poetry of the "Red River" and blood? I don't know. It just seemed odd to me. However, just anti-intellectual enough to embody the tone of much of the book.

Another example is his riff on Marian Anderson, the great contralto, who was denied access to the use Constitution Hall in Washington D. C. for a recital in 1939 because she was black. So, a wonderful and important open air recital was arranged on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. It made an exquisite point and is an important historical event. On page thirty-six, Marcus notes that Anderson wore "a heavy coat against the chill". Now, everyone knows that famous picture of her with the big statue of the seated Lincoln behind her. If you don't, just do a web image search on Marian Anderson Lincoln Memorial and you can see her in that heavy FUR coat. I wonder if Marcus left out that fur part because of modern sensibilities. I mean, with the way our time uses modern moral fashions to disqualify important folks of former times, did he avoid identifying her heavy coat as fur because of the current sentiment against them? Again, I don't know, but the very nature of this book and its style of writing called this question to my mind.

While I admire the facility of the writing of this book, I end up having a problem with the way the author makes his arguments. He gathers together a huge number of brand name images and sounds that have pre-associated feelings so it is the collage of these feelings that frame the "argument" rather than reason or evidence (which I assume Marcus does not believe in anyway). In the end, it is a meal that is unusual in its presentation and leaves one strangely empty even after a lot of eating. I also vastly disagree with his premises, commentary, and conclusions (such as they are) about America, its history, and the value of our society. But then again I am part of the "pure American corn" that he so easily looks down upon.

Good for him. Next!

5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars PLease, Stop now before you hurt yourself, December 2, 2007

By	Kevin Harvey "Professor Kev" (Worcester, MA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Marcus ran out of gas about the time he tried linking Bill Clinton to Elvis. Were it not for Bob Dylan, he might have nothing worth writing about. Attempting to read volumes into Bill Pullman's cheese block face felt like such a stretch that I finally dropped the book in exhaustion. For a long time Marcus sounded like he'd read too much Mailer, he now reads as if he's desperate to say something- anything- about the culture that no one else has noticed...I think I'll skip his next book on Dylan. I'm sure there's one in the works.