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Penguin Lives
Elvis Presley
A vibrant, sympathetic portrait of the once and future king of rock 'n' roll by the award-winning author of Shiloh and In Country To this clear-eyed portrait of the first rock 'n' roll superstar, Bobbie Ann Mason brings a novelist's insight and the empathy of a fellow Southerner who, from the first time she heard his voice on the family radio, knew that Elvis was "one of us." Elvis Presley deftly braids the mythic and human aspects of his story, capturing both the charismatic, boundary-breaking singer who reveled in his celebrity and the soft-spoken, working-class Southern boy who was fatally unprepared for his success. The result is a riveting, tragic book that goes to the heart of the American dream.
192 pages, Kindle Edition
First published September 6, 2002
15 people are currently reading
266 people want to read
About the author
Bobbie Ann Mason
89 books218 followersBobbie Ann Mason has won the PEN/Hemingway Award and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the American Book Award, and the PEN/Faulkner Award. Her books include In Country and Feather Crowns. She lives in Kentucky.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 48 reviews
May 27, 2016
As a Southerner , author Bobbie Ann Mason has a natural understanding for much of Elvis' early background which shaped so much of his life. While not an in depth study, the author provides a commentary that lends depth and sympathy to an original American icon. There was no one with a career like Elvis before. Here was a dirt poor Southern boy who shot to unprecedented fame and fortune without any guidance. In retrospect it was a sad out of control life of a major talent who could not control himself and would not let anyone help him.
August 14, 2019
I’ve read many books about Elvis, and this is by far the best.
It’s a short easy read, but really gives an insight into the Southern mindset of Elvis, and the little details that led to his attitude, fears and ultimately his downfall. A really great help in understanding why it went so wrong for him.
I’ve always know ‘colonel’ Tom was a fraud who ultimately killed Elvis. He was trusted, but screwed the Presley family over at every opportunity. Elvis never got over the death of his twin or his mother. If Gladys had lived to guide him for just another 5 years it would all have been very different.
It’s a short easy read, but really gives an insight into the Southern mindset of Elvis, and the little details that led to his attitude, fears and ultimately his downfall. A really great help in understanding why it went so wrong for him.
I’ve always know ‘colonel’ Tom was a fraud who ultimately killed Elvis. He was trusted, but screwed the Presley family over at every opportunity. Elvis never got over the death of his twin or his mother. If Gladys had lived to guide him for just another 5 years it would all have been very different.
June 27, 2017
A nice little bio and a quick read. Elvis always reminds me of my mother. She was a teenager when he exploded into fame in the Fifties. She was such a huge fan that, growing up in our house, any Elvis movie, special or biopic on TV was mandatory viewing. She indoctrinated me into Elvis fandom, and I still love listening to his music today.
September 14, 2022
Very hard reading about how others wasted Elvis Presley’s life.
January 29, 2023
Read this in about a day. I've read a couple other of these short Penguin bios--memorably, the one on James Joyce by Edna O'Brien. Like the Joyce one, they picked the perfect writer for this. Bobbie Ann Mason is a talented writer in her own right, plus a Southerner, like Elvis. Mason was also a teen when Elvis first became famous. She also seems to have a deep understanding of the class biases that faced Elvis and his family in Elvis' growing up years and throughout his life and career.
So much of Elvis' life and character has been turned into a caricature and a punchline, despite what an important figure he was. And these days, he's target number one on the list of so-called cultural appropriators, an accusation usually drawn up by younger people who have no reference point for what life (including music, class, race relations, teen culture, or regional biases) before Elvis and no interest in researching the actual context of his life. The "Elvis stole from black people" or "Elvis was a racist" line is not only simplistic and tired, it's offensive the more you know what his experience actually was.
Mason doesn't deny Elvis his negative traits or weaknesses. She actually offers some enlightening perspective on why Elvis, as a dirt-poor boy from a hard laborer's heritage in the deep South, would become addicted to the easy gratification of packaged and processed junk food, and she draws a heartbreaking correlation between his family's exploited sharecropping background and the exploitation of his talent and finances by his manager. (Elvis seemed to have suffered from a lifelong inferiority complex due to his family's heritage of poverty and defeat.) But she also doesn't deny him his humanity. She writes touchingly of his family's love for animals and simple entertainments, even after Elvis became rich, and his family's loyalty and dependence on each other. Overall, a fine and empathetic portrait.
So much of Elvis' life and character has been turned into a caricature and a punchline, despite what an important figure he was. And these days, he's target number one on the list of so-called cultural appropriators, an accusation usually drawn up by younger people who have no reference point for what life (including music, class, race relations, teen culture, or regional biases) before Elvis and no interest in researching the actual context of his life. The "Elvis stole from black people" or "Elvis was a racist" line is not only simplistic and tired, it's offensive the more you know what his experience actually was.
Mason doesn't deny Elvis his negative traits or weaknesses. She actually offers some enlightening perspective on why Elvis, as a dirt-poor boy from a hard laborer's heritage in the deep South, would become addicted to the easy gratification of packaged and processed junk food, and she draws a heartbreaking correlation between his family's exploited sharecropping background and the exploitation of his talent and finances by his manager. (Elvis seemed to have suffered from a lifelong inferiority complex due to his family's heritage of poverty and defeat.) But she also doesn't deny him his humanity. She writes touchingly of his family's love for animals and simple entertainments, even after Elvis became rich, and his family's loyalty and dependence on each other. Overall, a fine and empathetic portrait.
March 3, 2023
The Penguin Lives series is/was a series of short biographies published about famous people written by respected authors. The American writer Bobbie Ann Mason’s short biography of Elvis Presley fits the mission of The Penguin Lives series well. Mason organizes the biography of Presley in a series of short chapters. The biography was published in 2003. The book has a section on selected sources. Mason writes that “for me, Elvis is personal-as a Southerner and something of a neighbor. I heard Elvis from the very beginning on the Memphis radio stations” (Mason 1). This short biography of Presley tries to trace the cultural roots of Presley’s music. Mason writes that Presley, who was born in Tupelo, Mississippi (Mason 3), “listened to the same regional stew” of music as Mason’s white family from Kentucky (Mason 2). Mason writes that “I don’t remember the controversy he stirred up because everything he did seemed so natural and real, and he was one of us, a country person who spoke our language” (Mason 2). I have not read another biography of Presley but in many ways, she presents herself as the natural writer to write a short biography of Presley. Mason seems like she may be able to capture the personality of Presley as well in this short biography. Bobbie Ann Mason’s short biography of Elvis Presley is an excellent introduction or overview of Elvis Presley.
December 25, 2022
Very readable and well-written. The author truly cares about her subject, and tries to get to the truth underneath the facts. (The other Penguin Biography I've read, Andy Warhol, did too, but I didn't care very much for either author or subject.)
The Penguin Biographies are the ones for me! They're literary, easy to read, and informational.
The Penguin Biographies are the ones for me! They're literary, easy to read, and informational.
January 2, 2021
If you're looking for a good overview of Elvis' life, this is the book to read. It seems quite thorough yet concise with just enough detail to keep it interesting. The sections dealing with Col. Tom Parker's relationship with the Presley family were eye-opening. A very enjoyable read.
July 21, 2022
This is a concise but fair telling of Elvis’ story. It’s a short book, and isn’t the book for anyone seeking a deep dive, but for a quick recount and a focus on what’s important, this book works well.
August 20, 2022
This book provided a lot of insight into the life of Elvis from the beginning of his childhood through his rise to fame and his sad death. His music and movies are still loved by his many fans after all these years.
July 20, 2017
Really well done history of the King of Rock n Roll. This biography really great at depicting Elvis as a normal human being despite his legendary status. It's throughly thoughtful and well done!
June 4, 2018
Exhaustive review of the life of Elvis.
July 9, 2018
Great book, but such a sad life😢
November 19, 2018
Brief story that describes his life well.
January 30, 2021
This book is a good biography of Elvis Presley. It tells the story of the phenomenon that is the life the entertainer lived.
November 11, 2021
Knowing about The King is necessary but not sufficient to know about the legacy of The King. Mason does a good job of giving just the facts without too much editorializing.
November 26, 2021
Stunning. Touching. Well executed. Great book.
August 12, 2022
A workmanlike bio of Elvis that might meet your needs, if you don’t want to dedicate the effort to read the unsurpassed biographies of Presley written by Peter Guralnick.
July 20, 2023
It's... ok?
April 22, 2025
A nice bio, not overwhelmingly detailed but containing enough information to know all the basics - just what I wanted.
March 24, 2014
After reading this book by Bobbie Ann Mason (no relation, to my knowledge), I have seen more clearly how the South influenced so much of the life and artistry of Elvis. This is true, if for no other reason, than Mason cites William Faulkner as a prime example of how Elvis lived his life and how he battled the tension between his rural, southern upbringing and his Las Vegas stage performances. It is noted that Elvis was born only 15 miles away from where Faulkner was born in Mississippi. There are also several references to the writings of Faulkner. Col. Parker is compared to a Faulkner character, but this time the comparison is far from complimentary. Parker is much like Flem Snopes in "Spotted Horse" and is seen as the ultimate horse trader, and someone who enjoys a good swindle now and again. Presley's mother Gladys is seen to be someone like Eula Varner in Faulkner's The Hamlet, when she (Gladys) was a teenager. Mason writes, "Gladys, like Eula, had spells of lethargy and languidness, her smoldering sexuality throbbing in the Mississippi heat." Vernon is someone not unlike Sutpen in Absolom, Absolom, who has a dream of justice for his life and wants to rise from poverty and claim the American dream for himself and his family. When Elvis begins to reap the benefits of his success, Vernon takes over the financial aspects, but in so doing, he is constantly complaining about over-spending and having too many people on the payroll. In the light of Mason's descriptions, and her idea of seeing Elvis as a southerner allows the reader to understand better how his disintegration can be viewed as the often-told tale of a country boy losing his way in the big city, only in this case, the reality can be hard to accept if one has been a fan. For me, Christmas 1956, while living in Tacoma Park, Maryland, will remain the dominating image I have of Elvis because that was when I received a copy of his first RCA record album. From time to time, I take the record out of storage and recall the pleasure of hearing him sing the very first song he ever sang in public, when he was 10 years old. The song, "Old Shep," may not have been a popular one among his fans, but the Elvis who sang it revealed the deep roots of his love for music and the innocent happiness that comes from simple pleasures. Faulkner and Elvis. Who knew?
April 25, 2013
One of the best biographies I've ever read. Very brief, so it's hardly encyclopedic, but it does an amazing job of both capturing his spirit and explaining the behavior of him and his family and how they reacted to his sudden fame, and it does it with some fantastic prose. So many of the other books in the (late, lamented, wonderful) Penguin Lives series were written by Serious Historians, so it seemed odd that this one would be by Bobbie Ann Mason, a novelist, but after I read it I realized that she was really the only possible choice to write this. While someone like Greil Marcus might be better able to explain Elvis as a cultural phenomenon, I think this southern novelist was the best choice to explain Elvis as a southern country boy caught in the headlights of fame, to explain Elvis as Elvis.
April 20, 2010
This is a great little bio which draws from Peter Guralnick's two part biography and a shelf of other books on the big E. If you don't have time or inclination to wade through Guralnick this is the book for you, and it stands on its own pretty darn well given Mason's deep understanding of her fellow Southerner Mr. Presley's culture and upbringing. There's a lot of great stuff in this short and beautifully written book. It's sympathetic and really gets at the charisma and significance of Elvis, but doesn't spare the less squeaky clean details, of which there are many.
The chapter on E's meeting with Nixon is nicely done and leaves me wanting to read the account by Nixon's man and the one by E's man.
The chapter on E's meeting with Nixon is nicely done and leaves me wanting to read the account by Nixon's man and the one by E's man.
October 15, 2012
This story is about Elvis Presley's life and how he became the king. Elvis grew up in a very Religious home in Tupelo Mississippi. He came out of nowhere, he became a star after the Ed Sullivin show in the mid 1950s where racial Tennsions were on the rise and everybody was scared of the cold war.
"All i wanted to do was drive a truck" Elivs said.
“Some people tap their feet, some people snap their fingers, and some people sway back and forth. I just sorta do ‘em all together, I guess.”
"the image is one thing and the human being is another...it’s very hard to live up to an image.”
"All i wanted to do was drive a truck" Elivs said.
“Some people tap their feet, some people snap their fingers, and some people sway back and forth. I just sorta do ‘em all together, I guess.”
"the image is one thing and the human being is another...it’s very hard to live up to an image.”
May 14, 2016
Elvis Presley by Bobbie Ann Mason
I can't begin to tell you how upset I was when I
went to my local library to pick up my requested book.
I just couldn't believe that instead of a book I had
5 discs__a book on tape. As long as I have good
vision, I wan to read my own books. I considered
throwing it back in the return container, but I
wanted to know about the life of Elvis, the best
singer in the world.
The tape recorded by Karen White was so well done.
It was great! I love the book. I could listen to it and do
other things on the computer. Bobbie Ann Mason is the best writer of Southern stories. A++
I can't begin to tell you how upset I was when I
went to my local library to pick up my requested book.
I just couldn't believe that instead of a book I had
5 discs__a book on tape. As long as I have good
vision, I wan to read my own books. I considered
throwing it back in the return container, but I
wanted to know about the life of Elvis, the best
singer in the world.
The tape recorded by Karen White was so well done.
It was great! I love the book. I could listen to it and do
other things on the computer. Bobbie Ann Mason is the best writer of Southern stories. A++
July 2, 2010
I listened to this book - wonderfully narrated.
I suppose there's so much written about Elvis that Mason had to pick and choose. I have no idea if she did a good job or not, or what, if any, are her particular insights - but since I don't intend to follow up and be an Elvis scholar, it all worked for me.
As Mason tell it, the Elvis story is basically a parable on the dangers of success. Maybe that's why we keep chewing on it.
I suppose there's so much written about Elvis that Mason had to pick and choose. I have no idea if she did a good job or not, or what, if any, are her particular insights - but since I don't intend to follow up and be an Elvis scholar, it all worked for me.
As Mason tell it, the Elvis story is basically a parable on the dangers of success. Maybe that's why we keep chewing on it.
March 10, 2014
Overall, I found this book to be very good. It really showed me who Elvis was. It took me through the happy times to the tragic times. this book was really able to capture what drugs and fame can do to a person. My knowledge on Elvis improved as well as my opinion. However, this book was somewhat strange to me. I say this because the author seemed to have a crush on Elvis because of some of the ways that she has used her words while writing.
May 11, 2008
I really like the Penguin Lives series - the pairings of authors and subjects are often interesting, plus they're short, which is great when you're interested in learning something about a famous person but not quite 900 pages worth of interested. This one is a good example; it fleshed out what I knew about Elvis and gave some insight into how his life took on the trajectory it did.
March 22, 2012
Read this on the plane on the way to Memphis. Quick little bio that gave me just enough facts and interesting little tidbits to enlighten my one-time-is-enough visit to the icon's touristo trappo. Good read. Being Southern, Mason vividly describes Presley's parents, agent, etc. and tells his life with typical (and this is a complement) quirky southern charm.
August 16, 2016
A brilliant pairing. Bobbie Ann Mason, who grew up on a Kentucky dairy farm, groks the poor boy from Tupelo as few could. Why did Elvis allow colonel Parker to exploit him? Why did he waste his talent on silly movies? Why did he abuse prescription drugs, though he knew the dangers? Bobbie Ann offers answers that are persuasive, though they don't change the essential tragedy of Elvis.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 48 reviews