syllabi November 23, 2016

Reading for the Next Four Years

It is still unclear exactly what America under the presidency of Donald J. Trump will look like. But if we believe his campaign promises—deporting of millions of people, registering Muslims, gutting the Affordable Care Act—it’s apparent that sustained political resistance will be necessary. Already, protestors have taken to the streets of cities like New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Austin, Portland, and in many other places.

In bookstores, it is heartening to see that works by authors such as Angela Davis, Walter Benjamin, Arundhati Roy, bell hooks, George Orwell, and Ta-Nehisi

syllabi November 23, 2015

Southern Comedy

When it comes to literature, the word southern practically begs for the follow-up gothic. A certain set of tropes spring to mind when you mention the South: alligators and frosted julep cups, hypocritical preachers and Civil War widows, decaying mansions and petit fours. With all the antebellum remnants to contend with, you don’t expect anyone to be very funny.

But what I found when I worked on my book South Toward Home was that, too often, people are missing the humor in southern literature, the comic asides in the tales of deep-fried grotesque. Just listen to Flannery O’Connor read “A Good

culture June 22, 2012

Killer on the Road: Violence and the American Interstate by Ginger Strand

It’s no coincidence that the title of Killer on the Road, Ginger Strand’s analysis of the interstate system and the violence intertwined within it, sounds familiar. That phrase echoes throughout the past sixty years of American pop culture, from Jim Morrison’s breathy warnings in “Riders on the Storm” to James Ellroy’s pulpy noir of the same name about a Manson-obsessed schizophrenic. “If a song or book title contains the word Interstate or Freeway, expect mayhem,” Strand warns. And the book demonstrates why this is the case. Killer is a titillating, clever volume that mixes the sweeping

interviews January 04, 2012

Bookforum talks with Greil Marcus

For the past forty years, Greil Marcus has looked at rock music not just as entertainment but as part of American mythology. Reading Marcus is to witness a stray musical note become the spine of an essay, or a growl connect Billboard hits to civil war customs. In his latest book, The Doors: A Lifetime of Listening to Five Mean Years, Marcus explains what he hears in The Doors’ work—everything from Thomas Pynchon to Val Kilmer—song by song. Bookforum spoke to Marcus about Elvis impersonators, songs so good they make you almost wreck your car, and whether Jim Morrison is just a little embarrassing.

In the introduction to his 1975 book Mystery Train, Greil Marcus set forth a challenge: to start taking rock and roll music seriously, to approach pop music “not as youth culture, or counterculture, but simply as American culture.” For the past forty years, he has done just that, looking at rock music not just as entertainment but as part of American mythology. Reading Marcus is to witness a stray musical note become the spine of an essay, or a growl connect Billboard hits to civil war customs. In his latest book, The Doors: A Lifetime of Listening to Five Mean Years, Marcus explains what he

syllabi January 21, 2010

The Cartography of Crime

In a noir novel, the cityscape is as crucial as the crime spree, and investigators like Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe and Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade are our sleep-deprived, chain-smoking, gin-soaked tour guides. The following books render their city’s cartography through the cadences of detective fiction, sketching blood-spattered maps of the world’s mean streets. As Philip Marlowe described Los Angeles in The Long Goodbye, “A city no worse than others, a city rich and vigorous and full of pride, a city lost and beaten and full of emptiness. It all depends on where you sit . . .”

Margaret

Margaret Eby