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3.89 AVERAGE
3.89 AVERAGE
informative
slow-paced
Quite the slog, but not too bad when he settles down and just tells us about avant-gard history instead of reiterating once again that the Sex Pistols are a continuation of that legacy. Its a book that's very much obsessed with itself and how clever it is being.
as someone who RARELY reads non-fiction, to see this up on my shelf should signal something to you. READ IT! Read it NOW! this is an amazing and well-researched (and long...) book about counterculture across the last 100 years. huge sections on dada and situationists, etc., though the book starts and ends with punk, tying cultural movements together. Marcus is brilliant.
What a bastard! [a:Greil Marcus|33221|Greil Marcus|http://www.goodreads.com/images/nophoto/nophoto-M-50x66.jpg] sucked me in with 70s punk trivia and turned out to be an introductory text on Dadaism, Situationist International and the May '68 riots that shaped contemporary France.
But, if this book as anything to say, it shaped punk too. By bookending philosophy with punk histories it convinced me that listening to protest music was not enough; it uncovered a philosophy that demonstrates the true danger and disruptive joy that should have informed the instruments and ears of everyone under the punk tag. Assuming, of course, that all punks were academic at heart.
The book is definitely rewarding but, given its spirit, tends to gleefully confound the reader just as its focus organization once did.
The question is: being not a punk but mere punk listener 20 years too late, how do I take my new understanding of SI, '68 and continue their good work in business casual and the grocery?
But, if this book as anything to say, it shaped punk too. By bookending philosophy with punk histories it convinced me that listening to protest music was not enough; it uncovered a philosophy that demonstrates the true danger and disruptive joy that should have informed the instruments and ears of everyone under the punk tag. Assuming, of course, that all punks were academic at heart.
The book is definitely rewarding but, given its spirit, tends to gleefully confound the reader just as its focus organization once did.
The question is: being not a punk but mere punk listener 20 years too late, how do I take my new understanding of SI, '68 and continue their good work in business casual and the grocery?
this book literally changed my whole worldview when I read it in high school.
It links ideologically the Free Spirit movement of the European Middle Ages to the Parisian student uprisings of the late sixties to the evolution of UK punk in one surly, ill-mannered, shaggy-dog epic. Ne travaillez jamais!
I love Greil Marcus and punk rock, but this book sort of stalled in the middle and never really regained its momentum. The kind of thing that probably works well in the critical/culutral studies elective of your BA degree.
I think I may have enjoyed this more if I had read it prior to reading John Higgs' "Stranger Than We Can Imagine," which I think said what Marcus was trying to say far more coherently and readably. Still a very interesting book, though.
This is one of the most amazing books I've ever read. It not only exposed me to so much history, but wove together all these different movements and ideas to show that those of us with interests and ideas that are out of the mainstream are not alone. A groundbreaking, breathtaking book. I read it when it first came out in 1989 and just bought it for my Kindle for the sole reason that I can now have it with me wherever I go (I'm keeping my print copy but it is a little big to lug around).
