Conversations with Greil Marcus (Literary Conversations Series)

by Joe Bonomo (Editor), Greil Marcus

Greil Marcus once said to an interviewer, "There is an infinite amount of meaning about anything, and I free associate." For more than four decades, Marcus has explored the connections among figures, sounds, and events in culture, relating unrelated points of departure, mapping alternate histories and surprising correspondences. He is a unique and influential voice in American letters. Marcus was born in 1945 in San Francisco. In 1968 he published his first piece, a review of Magic The Who on Tour , in Rolling Stone , where he became the magazine's first records editor. Renowned for his ongoing "Real Life Top Ten" column, Marcus has been a writer for a number of magazines and websites, and is the author and editor of over fifteen books. His critique is no figure, object, or event is too high, low, celebrated, or obscure for an inquiry into the ways in which our lives can open outward, often unexpectedly. In Conversations with Greil Marcus , Marcus discuses in lively, wide-ranging interviews his books and columns as well as his critical methodology and broad approach to his material, signaled by a generosity of spirit leavened with aggressive critical standards.

Genres: Music, History, Criticism

Hardcover

First published October 1, 2012

About the author

Joe Bonomo's books include Play This Book Loud: Noisy Essays, No Place I Would Rather Be: Roger Angell and a Life In Baseball Writing, Field Recordings from The Inside (essays), AC/DC’s Highway to Hell (33 1/3 Series), Jerry Lee Lewis: Lost and Found, Installations (National Poetry Series), Sweat: The Story of The Fleshtones, America’s Garage Band, and Conversations With Greil Marcus. A five-time "Notable Essays" selection at Best American Essays, he's the Music Columnist at The Normal School and Professor of English at Northern Illinois University.

Reviews

[Tom · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was supposed to be a slight distraction from the other, "important" reading I'm supposed to be doing, and it was going that way for about sixty pages before I realized I was powerless to stop. I blitzed through the last two thirds of this book over the past twenty-four hours, and loved it. Along with Simon Reynolds' four-part interview with Marcus in the Los Angeles Review of Books, this book is as good an overview of Marcus' life and work as we're likely to get. Joe Bonomo's selections are wonderful, and I'm impressed at the scope and variety of interviews included. For thirty years' worth of interviews, there's surprisingly little repetition. The best part, for me, is that, other than the long online exchange, the "20 Questions" piece at the end, and maybe the joint interview with Werner Sollors, I'd never read any of these before. So there's much to discover here, and much to read and re-read afterwards. I'm ashamed I still haven't tackled Lipstick Traces.

[Bob · Rating 5 out of 5]

My hero. His words have shaped the way I listen to music for many years now.