Advanced Elvis Course

by C.A. Conrad

Part psychedelic road-trip travelogue, part “Overheard in Graceland,” part mystic-religious devotional, CAConrad's unabated love for the King puts him on a pilgrimage to Memphis; on an Advanced Elvis Course. These bizarre, multifaceted short pieces are an homage bursting with love, oddball white trash, and twisted sincerity.

Using a mélange of breathless energy and flamboyant desire, Conrad ensnares his reader from the first vignette, leaving us no choice but to doggedly follow him around the backwaters of Memphis. Conrad blurs the distinction between real and fictional experience to create a transcendental portrait of the legendary Elvis—the man who changed music and America forever. Through sources as disparate as graffiti, talk-show interviews, phone messages, and poetry, Conrad (whose unfettered energy is about as reality-based as an evening at Graceland) constructs a semimystical collage both celebrating and laughing with the cult of Elvis.

Get ready for a surreal tour of a celebrity-obsessed, picaresque America from one of its most unusual guides. Conrad delights in turning his fantasies into our reality, making this frenetic fictionalized experience “as real as if it were real.”

Genres: Poetry

144 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2009

About the author

CAConrad’s childhood included selling cut flowers along the highway for his mother and helping her shoplift. He is the author of 9 books of poetry and essays the latest While Standing In Line For Death is forthcoming from Wave Books in September 2017. He is a Pew Fellow and has also received fellowships from Lannan Foundation, MacDowell Colony, Headlands Center for the Arts, Banff, RADAR, Flying Ojbect and Ucross. For his books, essays, and details on the documentary The Book of Conrad (Delinquent Films, 2016), please visit http://CAConrad.blogspot.com

Reviews

[C.A. · Rating 5 out of 5]

YOU TUBE READING FROM BOOK: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKOkrn...

JUST VOTED "MOST INTERESTING BOOK OF 2009" http://www.themillions.com/2009/12/a-... THIS COULDN'T MAKE ME HAPPIER!

If you think Eternity isn't Elvis you haven't looked for his image in freckles on your backside. He's there, he's always there, waiting for you to turn your butt to the mirror and worship worship WORSHIP YOUR BEAUTIFUL ELVIS ASS FRECKLE. YAY! I look forward to the day you find him there! Peace be with you.

http://advancedELVIS.blogspot.com

[Eric · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had a dream the other night that I was in the White House Press Room. When it was my turn to ask a question, I instead started reading from Advanced Elvis Course. Everyone in the room was quiet. After I was done, I said in a shaky voice, "You should all go out and read Advanced Elvis Course by CAConrad." I wasn't scared when I was reading from the book, but I felt completely terrified after I was done speaking. In the dream, I felt that I had done something extremely important. I felt like some permanent change in the world had taken place. This is true. In lieu of a White House press conference, I urge you to read this beautiful book.

[Eadie McCarthy]

I enjoyed this. It describes the fever of being a fan. How being obsessed with Elvis has bordered on being religious for a lot of people, particularly the writer.

it's a book made up of small interactions and overzealous thoughts about Elvis, quite a quick read. Not what i would usually read, but I picked it up because the book seller at Gays The Word recommended it. It kind of reminded me of the book Fan Girls, just in it's completely openess of letting yourself be a fan.

[Danny Caine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Philadephia's maniac poet-on-the-streets delivers a crazy plunge into mystical Memphis kitsch. After reading Advanced Elvis Course it's hard to look at the cult of Elvis the same way. After all, "the only difference between a cult and a religion is the size of the congregation."

[arden · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Question: Elvis, if I surrender into my tenderness . . . for good . . . how would I survive the world?

Answer: (p. 215) He was convinced, and nearly had us convinced, that there were energy waves so powerful they caused stars to glide through the universe." (p 106)

[Don · Rating 4 out of 5]

I now have my Certificate of Completion in Advanced Elvis. Praise Him! This made me giggle and laugh and smile and ponder and listen to even more Elvis.

[Camilla Bogetun · Rating 5 out of 5]

Simply loved it.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s awesome seeing here the seeds of what would eventually become Conrad’s somatic poetry experiments, and parts of the book are funny in a way that don’t recall in Conrad’s books to follow this (which I love for other reasons). In Advanced Elvis Course Conrad deifies Elvis—capitalizing “He” each time the pronoun is meant for Elvis, etcetera—and takes that deification seriously even as others around them find it odd.

The book feels like a kind of notebook, where quotes, transcriptions, poems, and prose, at times highlighting Conrad’s experience as a member of the LGBTQIA2S+ community, all come together in an order that’s a little hard to make sense of at points, and maybe that just reveals the porousness of Conrad’s writing process.

A highlight comes toward the end: “If I stand still long enough I would be a place / and no one wants to visit a place that’s been a man too long / Elvis wants to distill for five minutes in downtown Memphis / stood still in such a way no one knew how to get there” (130).

[Dana · Rating 5 out of 5]

brilliant from the very first page, bravo CA

[Jeremy · Rating 5 out of 5]

After reading this book, I can hardly believe I survived this long more or less deprived of Elvis. You need to read this book.