The Dustbin of History

by Greil Marcus

"How much history can be communicated by pressure on a guitar string?" Robert Palmer wondered in Deep Blues . Greil Marcus answers more than we will ever know. It is the history in the riff, in the movie or novel or photograph, in the actor's pose or critic's posturing--in short, the history in cultural happenstance--that Marcus reveals here, exposing along the way the distortions and denials that keep us oblivious if not immune to its lessons. Whether writing about the Beat Generation or Umberto Eco, Picasso's Guernica or the massacre in Tiananmen Square, The Manchurian Candidate or John Wayne's acting, Eric Ambler's antifascist thrillers or Camille Paglia, Marcus uncovers the histories embedded in our cultural moments and acts, and shows how, through our reading of the truths our culture tells and those it twists and conceals, we situate ourselves in that history and in the world. Rarely has a history lesson been so exhilarating. With the startling insights and electric style that have made him our foremost writer on American music, Marcus brings back to life the cultural events that have defined us and our time, the social milieu in which they took place, and the individuals engaged in them. As he does so, we see that these cultural instances--as lofty as The Book of J , as humble as a TV movie about Jan and Dean, as fleeting as a few words spoken at the height of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement, as enduring as a Paleolithic painting--often have more to tell us than the master-narratives so often passed off as faultless representations of the past. Again and again Marcus skewers the widespread assumption that history exists only in the past, that it is behind us, relegated to the dustbin. Here we see instead that history is very much with us, being made and unmade every day, and unless we recognize it our future will be as cramped and impoverished as our present sense of the past.

Genres: Music, History, Essays, Nonfiction, Cultural Studies, Politics, The United States Of America

240 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1995

About the author

Greil Marcus is an American author, music journalist and cultural critic. He is notable for producing scholarly and literary essays that place rock music in a broader framework of culture and politics. In recent years he has taught at Berkeley, Princeton, Minnesota, NYU, and the New School in New York. He lives in Oakland, California.

Reviews

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've owned this for years, at least a decade, but the density and abstraction of the opening essay, coupled with the book's relative lack of music writing, rendered this something less than a must-read. But I'm very glad I gave it another shot, and a little annoyed with myself for not trusting that Marcus would make something interesting and worthwhile out of Nazi-hunting thriller novels, various visual artists, Susan Sontag, and the unknown-to-me early-R&B businesswoman Deborah Chessler, among the numerous subjects he tackles here. As usual, I find myself facing down an unpredictable shopping list -- Marcus is bad (but so good!) for my wallet. (A sampling: Peter Handke's Short Letter, Long Farewell, the works of Eric Ambler, Peter Schneider's The Wall Jumper -- Germany looms large in this book -- and movies like American Hot Wax and The Manchurian Candidate.)

The overall themes here aren't all that unusual for Marcus -- secret and shadow histories, one-off moments of transcendence and revelation, the triumphs of small, often forgotten pieces of popular culture -- but what makes The Dustbin of History a little different from the rest of his work (at least what I've read of it) is its range. He's all over the map here, both geographically and metaphorically. In a way, it's sort of strange to see some of his old standbys, like Bob Dylan and Robert Johnson, in this context, just because they're such familiar touchstones for his work, but it's not like their presence doesn't make sense. For a collection of pieces written anywhere between the mid-'70s and the mid-'90s, it holds together remarkably well, and I can definitely see myself revisiting at least half a dozen of these essays for years to come.

[Simon · Rating 4 out of 5]

If life still allows me to be at a good university and to be able to go to a series of lectures on diverse and loosely linked subjects, and to take my time with some of the more closely argued concepts and to be made to chuckle with recognition or surprise, then life would be quite like reading The Dustbin of History.
Sometimes obscure, sometimes somewhat dated in his points of cultural reference (ok it was published in 1995 - but even then it was only dons and bar props who were pointing to these sources) but always well argued, thought provoking and entertaining.
I've been drawn through these essays at a dash. I shall return to each one separately and give it the full attention it deserves.

[Hannah Cook · Rating 1 out of 5]

This was SOOOOOOOOOOOO BORING. UGH. I finished it about 2 months ago and I'm actually still haunted by how lame and boring it was. I felt like he had kind of a good concept (which I can't recall right now, but I picked it off the shelf so it must have sounded good) and he totally blew it. Yawn fest.

[Thomas Thieme · Rating 1 out of 5]

Greil Marcus is an old- school rock critic, famous mostly for his negative review of a Bob Dylan record for Rolling Stone. He's from that pantheon of would-be taste makers, the kind that infuriate fans at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame every year with their wacky nominations. He contributed one of Rolling Stone's memorable review walk-backs by having said he'd buy a record of Dylan breathing heavy, but after Dylan's Self Portrait, saying "but not breathing soft". The one who led his review with "What is this s***"?" Yeah, well, spoken like a guy who got his records for free and had the luxury of determining whether a record was spiffy. Not helpful if you're deciding whether the album is worth your school lunch money for a week but at least he was an entertaining read. Time has been kinder to Self Portrait than to Marcus. He's expanded his subject matter to movies, books and oh yes, history. And he sure has expanded his vocabulary. Like a lot of old school rock critics, he is still full of himself. He likes long-winded sentences that you hope will yield complexity of thought but unfortunately, it's like the diver who makes a dramatic leap off the board with poise and flair but ends with a cannonball. He should take cues from Thomas Pynchon as to how to write those kind of sentences. The only thing, Greil, is that when Pynchon does it, he's got something substantial to say. Your points elicit "Yeah...so? Marcus is the Jack Black character in "High Fidelity" except now he's decided that his opinions of literature, movies and history are just as Significant and Insightful as they are of music. So, reader, you might say "What makes this reviewer any different? It's just his opinion, man." Fair enough. This is what confirms my skepticism: He devotes a chapter to one of those tv movies of the week so popular in the 70s and early 80s where someone triumphs over the illness/disability of the week. This time, Jan Berry of Jan and Dean fame, was the victim. Marcus attempts to portray Jan Berry as a genius lost to cruel fate. He holds up "Deadman's Curve" and "Surf City" as indicators of What We Lost when Jan tragically drove his sports car into a truck. What Marcus never mentions is that the former song was written by Brian Wilson with Roger Christian, who transformed his extensive knowledge of cars into the poetic and myth-building lyrics of "Little Deuce Coupe", "Don't Worry Baby" and "Custom Machine", and with Jan Berry and Artie Kornfeld, the other two guys in the room who never demonstrated any proof of doing more than being in the room. The latter song was written by Brian Wilson. The story there is he played Jan and Dean two of his latest creations at the time, "Surfin' USA" and "Surf City". They pleaded for him to give them "Surfin' USA" but Brian insisted that was slated for the Beach Boys. But seeing as the other one needed to be finished and he'd lost interest, maybe they'd like to...and they grabbed it and sent it to #1, much to the ire of Brian's dad and probably the Beach Boys. Jan Berry's "genius", his major songwriting contribution to our culture, was ad-libbing a few lines here and there to some Brian Wilson songs and imitating Brian Wilson's records so well that Jan and Dean are often mistaken for the Beach Boys. But then rock critics of Marcus' generation, the old Rolling Stone crowd, have always been loathe to give Brian Wilson the credit he deserves. Ask them why and watch them squirm. My point is that if Marcus can't be trusted with the truth about Jan Berry, how much of what he has to say about John Ford, Picasso, or anybody can be ? Content-wide, I got the feeling I'd paid to see the bearded lady and came face to face with a guy in a dress. After wading through as much of this haughty pontification as I could, I came away with much to be skeptical of and nothing worth remembering. It all sounds very fanciful and wordy but it all contracts into nothing, kind of like intellectual cotton candy. Without the sweetener. (The *spoiler alert* is not me, it was automatically added and won't edit out. I don't know what I spoiled.)

[Mayfly · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pleasant and readable, applying interesting and often familiar ideas to more or less familiar elements of popular culture, but doing so without being incisive or necessary or urgent. It read like an exercise in writing rather than something with anything to say; a patient plodding unrolling of an obvious line of thought.

[Malcolm · Rating 3 out of 5]

Griel Marcus is one of the sharpest popular culture analysts we're lucky enough to have. Some of these essays have dated, but a few have really stood the test of time. The stand-out piece for me (amid a series of useful and in places insightful forays into the socal, cultural and political significance and contexts of popular cultural texts) is the essay 'Myth and Misquotation' originally delivered as a commencement speech at UC Berkeley. It is a brief essay I keep coming back to because it deals with the subtle significances of language - often at level of individual words. The book is worth it for this piece alone.

[RA · Rating 2 out of 5]

Okay, ole Grrreil Marrrrcus is kinda classically informed critique-person, maybe more of an an analyst/"comparer", brings up lots of references about a lot of subjects in his writing, some of which I had no bleepin' idea what he was referrin' to, and didn't really care to know about, but other stuff I do know something about, an' I have, like, my own well-(or-not-so-well-)formed opinions about. Interesting, to say the least.

[robert · Rating 4 out of 5]

The title essay is oh so brilliant.

[Nick Black · Rating 4 out of 5]

quality of thought: 3 stars
esoteric level of references: 5 stars
average: 4 stars

[Marlobo ♥ epilogues · Rating 2 out of 5]

Esperaba mucho, y lo único que tuve fue mucho sueño. Aburrido.