Greil Marcus launches his new book, a study of Elvis Presley’s presence in popular culture since 1977, with a clever title–Dead Elvis: A Chronicle of a Cultural Obsession. Given the omnipresence of Elvis in contemporary life–as the song says, “Elvis Is Everywhere”–he often seems more alive today than he did during much of his career. “The enormity of his impact on culture,” Marcus writes, “was never really clear when he was alive.” Only after his death can we truly understand the meaning of Elvis, as he returns to us from beyond the grave in bizarre and varied forms of kitsch: as a ghost, or still alive, in the tabloids; as Love Me Tender shampoo; as the lead singer for a band, Dread Zeppelin, that plays only reggae versions of Led Zeppelin songs. For millions of others Elvis is no joke; he lives on in memory as “the King,” a minor and benevolent deity of sorts. “No one,” Marcus suggests, “could have predicted the ubiquity, the playfulness, the perversity, the terror, and the fun of this, of Elvis Presley’s second life.” Dead Elvis is an attempt both to capture some of this playful cascade of meanings and to make some sense of it all.
What is it in Marcus that evokes such uncritical praise? In part, he practically begs to be considered Important, and many have taken the bait. Marcus presents himself as a high-powered, relentlessly hip critic with Things to Say, a critic so postmodern that in his Dead Elvis bibliography German Marxist philosopher Theodor Adorno nestles up next to The Adventures of Ford Fairlane, starring noted philosopher Andrew Dice Clay. In a way, Marcus’s success is similar to that of semiphilosopher Camille Paglia, whom he admires and in many ways resembles. Writer Molly Ivins has complained of Paglia’s “I am the Cosmos” mentality, her tendency to elevate her own subjective responses to the level of philosophy. Marcus is afflicted with a similar narcissism. The book is less a chronicle of cultural obsession than it is an exploration of Marcus’s own obsessions; this may not always be interesting to the reader, but it certainly saved Marcus from much tedious research. When Marcus writes something like “Elvis . . . took no prisoners: he released you into the world” my question is: Who is this “you” anyway?
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As a book reviewer Marcus is not half-bad, in part because the format constrains his more lyrical outbursts. His review of Albert Goldman’s Elvis biography, for example, effectively puts down an arrogant attempt to defame not only Elvis but the American south. “Goldman’s Elvis,” Marcus writes angrily, “seeks . . . to exclude Elvis Presley, and the culture of the white working-class south . . . and the culture of rock ‘n’ roll . . . from any serious consideration of American culture.” Marcus goes on to report sadly that Goldman’s “bait is being taken: in the New York Times . . . Christopher Lehmann-Haupt wrote that after reading Goldman’s book ‘one feels revolted by American culture for permitting itself to be exemplified by the career of Elvis Presley.’” Of course Marcus is right to protest the vacuous elitism that attempts to reduce Elvis’s career and his culture to pathetic jokes.
Marcus has not learned nearly so much from punk as he thinks. As Marcus says, punk culture is based upon radical juxtapositions and relentless cultural appropriation, the kind of appropriation that allows us today to mock and glorify Elvis all at once, and that allows Marcus to enliven his writing with insights from both Hugo Ball, the German dadaist poet, and the TV show The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd. But punk is about more than juxtaposition; it was also, musically and philosophically, a reaction to the pompous, pseudo-arty, 20-minute heavy-metal extravaganzas that were taking over rock music in the 70s. Punk songs were short and to the point; they were deliberately free of digressions and distractions. Marcus’s prose style, by contrast, is the written equivalent of the lumbering, self-indulgent guitar solo that never ends. Marcus may revere Johnny Rotten, but his writing reminds me of Spinal Tap.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): illustration/Chuck Nitti.
