In the fascist bathroom: Writings on punk, 1977-1992 (Penguin Rock)

Arts & Photography

MARCUS, Greil

Music

Penguin Books, Ltd.

The perfect gift for music fans and anyone who loves artists like Elvis Presley, Randy Newman, Sly Stone, Robert Johnson, and Harmonica Frank. In 1975, Greil Marcus’s Mystery Train changed the way readers thought about rock ’n’ roll and continues to be sought out today by music fans and anyone interested in pop culture. Looking at recordings by six key artists—Robert Johnson, Harmonica Frank, Randy Newman, the Band, Sly Stone, and Elvis Presley—Marcus offers a complex and unprecedented analysis of the relationship between rock ‘n’ roll and American culture. In this latest edition, Marcus provides an extensively updated and rewritten Note and Discographies section, exploring the recordings’ evolution and continuing impact.

Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock 'n' Roll Music: Sixth Edition

Plume

On January 26, 1957, Richard Hamilton wrote a now-famous letter outlining his definition of what Pop Art Is.” This volume celebrates the fiftieth anniversary of Hamilton’s prophetic document, presenting the works of more than forty artists from his own generation of Pop artists (among them Hamilton himself, Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, and Andy Warhol) and from artists of subsequent generations who have contributed to the development and dissemination of Pop Art (Jeff Koons, Richard Prince, Mike Kelley, Damien Hirst, and others). A text by Greil Marcus, a photographic essay by Louise Lawler, and an interview with Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown by Dan Graham are included in the book, which illuminates the powerful, international impact of Pop Art throughout the second half of the 20th century. Pop represented a sudden and dramatic expansion of often-contradictory possibilities, and for this reason and others the concept of Pop remains vital in contemporary art.

Pop Art Is

History & Criticism

GAGOSIAN GALLERY

One of our finest critics gives us an altogether original history of rock ’n’ roll Unlike all previous versions of rock ’n’ roll history, this book omits almost every iconic performer and ignores the storied events and turning points that everyone knows. Instead, in a daring stroke, Greil Marcus selects ten songs recorded between 1956 and 2008, then proceeds to dramatize how each embodies rock ’n’ roll as a thing in itself, in the story it tells, inhabits, and acts out—a new language, something new under the sun. “Transmission” by Joy Division. “All I Could Do Was Cry” by Etta James and then Beyoncé. “To Know Him Is to Love Him,” first by the Teddy Bears and almost half a century later by Amy Winehouse. In Marcus’s hands these and other songs tell the story of the music, which is, at bottom, the story of the desire for freedom in all its unruly and liberating glory. Slipping the constraints of chronology, Marcus braids together past and present, holding up to the light the ways that these striking songs fall through time and circumstance, gaining momentum and meaning, astonishing us by upending our presumptions and prejudices. This book, by a founder of contemporary rock criticism—and its most gifted and incisive practitioner—is destined to become an enduring classic.

The History of Rock 'n' Roll in Ten Songs

Yale University Press

From the author of The History of Rock ’n’ Roll in Ten Songs comes his “Basement Tapes”: the complete “Real Life Rock Top 10” columns For nearly thirty years, Greil Marcus has written a remarkable column called “Real Life Rock Top Ten.” It has been a laboratory where he has fearlessly explored and wittily dissected an enormous variety of cultural artifacts, from songs to books to movies to advertisements. Taken together, his musings, reflections, and sallies amount to a subtle and implicit theory of how cultural objects fall through time and circumstance and often deliver unintended consequences, both in the present and in the future. Real Life Rock reveals the critic in full: direct, erudite, funny, fierce, vivid, uninhibited, and possessing an unerring instinct for art and fraud. The result is an indispensable volume packed with startling arguments and casual brilliance.

Real Life Rock: The Complete Top Ten Columns, 1986-2014

Literature & Fiction

Essays & Correspondence

Under the Red White and Blue: Patriotism, Disenchantment and the Stubborn Myth of the Great Gatsby

An "astute, challenging, and far-reaching" look (Kirkus Reviews, starred) at&nbsp;how F. Scott Fitzgerald's vision of the American Dream has been understood, portrayed, distorted, misused, and kept alive &nbsp; "I found great pleasure in . . . Under the Red White and Blue . . .&nbsp;about the idea of the American dream, its allure, the exploitation of it." --Percival Everett, New York Times Book Review, "By The Book" section &nbsp; Renowned critic Greil Marcus takes on the fascinating legacy of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. An enthralling parable (or a cheap metaphor) of the American Dream as a beckoning finger toward a con game, a kind of virus infecting artists of all sorts over nearly a century, Fitzgerald's story has become a key to American culture and American life itself. &nbsp; Marcus follows the arc of The Great Gatsby from 1925 into the ways it has insinuated itself into works by writers such as Philip Roth and Raymond Chandler; found echoes in the work of performers from Jelly Roll Morton to Lana Del Rey; and continued to rewrite both its own story and that of the country at large in the hands of dramatists and filmmakers from the 1920s to John Collins's 2006 Gatz and Baz Luhrmann's critically reviled (here celebrated) 2013 movie version--the fourth, so far.

Folk Music: A Bob Dylan Biography in Seven Songs

Acclaimed cultural critic Greil Marcus tells the story of Bob Dylan through the lens of seven penetrating songs\n“The most interesting writer on Dylan over the years has been the cultural critic Greil Marcus. . . . No one alive knows the music that fueled Dylan’s imagination better. . . . Folk Music . . . [is an] ingenious book of close listening.”—David Remnick, New Yorker\n“Marcus delivers yet another essential work of music journalism.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)\n“Further elevates Marcus to what he has always been: a supreme artist-critic.”—Hilton Als\nAcross seven decades, Bob Dylan has been the first singer of American song. As a writer and performer, he has rewritten the national songbook in a way that comes from his own vision and yet can feel as if it belongs to anyone who might listen.\nIn Folk Music, Greil Marcus tells Dylan’s story through seven of his most transformative songs. Marcus’s point of departure is Dylan’s ability to “see myself in others.” Like Dylan’s songs, this book is a work of implicit patriotism and creative skepticism. It illuminates Dylan’s continuing presence and relevance through his empathy—his imaginative identification with other people. This is not only a deeply felt telling of the life and times of Bob Dylan but a rich history of American folk songs and the new life they were given as Dylan sat down to write his own.

Biographies & Memoirs

Arts & Literature

A funny, fierce, and uninhibited musical chronicle of the convulsive past six years from one of our finest cultural critics\n"A one-of-a-kind guide to rock music’s resonance in every aspect of our lives.”—David Kirby, Wall Street Journal\n“A smart set of suggestions for further reading, viewing, and listening by a most trustworthy guide.”—Kirkus Reviews\nFor the past thirty-five years, celebrated author Greil Marcus has applied his unmatched critical apparatus to everything from music, television, radio, and politics to overheard comments, advertisements, and happenstance street encounters—an eclectic collection of what he calls “everyday culture and found objects.”\nThis book collects hundreds of items from the crisscrossing spectrum of culture and politics throughout the tumultuous past six years of American life, an essential travel guide to the scorched landscape of recent history. Tracking the evolution of national identity during the Trump administration, Marcus spotlights the most whip-smart cultural artifacts to compose a mosaic portrait of American society, replete with unexpected heroes and villains, absurdity and its consequences, humor and despair, terror and defiance—as seen through media, music, and more.\nBursting with Marcus’s effortless, no-nonsense, unapologetic verve, this book features seventy-three columns from 2014 through February 2021.

More Real Life Rock: The Wilderness Years, 2014–2021

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by MARCUS, Greil. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by MARCUS, Greil

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by MARCUS, Greil. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

In the fascist bathroom: Writings on punk, 1977-1992 (Penguin Rock)

Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock 'n' Roll Music: Sixth Edition

Pop Art Is

The History of Rock 'n' Roll in Ten Songs

Real Life Rock: The Complete Top Ten Columns, 1986-2014

The History of Rock 'n' Roll in Ten Songs

Real Life Rock: The Complete Top Ten Columns, 1986-2014

Under the Red White and Blue: Patriotism, Disenchantment and the Stubborn Myth of the Great Gatsby

Folk Music: A Bob Dylan Biography in Seven Songs

More Real Life Rock: The Wilderness Years, 2014–2021