The Dustbin of History

The Dustbin of History. Greil Marcus. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1995. 274 pp. $22.95.

Rock 'n' roll fans who can read all know that Greil Marcus' essay "Elvis: Presliad" (from Mystery Train, his collection of essays on rock and the blues) is the key to understanding the King as a world historical figure. Readers with a classy education also know that "Presliad" belongs to that small batch of cultural signposts-Emerson's "American Scholar," Melville's "Hawthorne and His Mosses," Van Wyck Brook's "America's Coming of Age"-that have charted the evolution of American culture.

There is more to Greil Marcus' rock criticism than the celebrated essays in Mystery Train. In Dead Elvis, Marcus carries the saga of the "pre-dead Elvis" to demonstrate in words and pictures how the corpse of the King has become a national Rorschach test. His Lipstick Traces discovers a secret history of the twentieth century in the lyrics of the Sex Pistols.

There is also more to Greil Marcus than the rock critic. He has written some of the best literary, film, and all around cultural criticism anyone is likely to read. This collection of his magazine work pulls together pieces that appeared from the mid-seventies to the present in magazines like Rolling Stone, Village Voice, Common Knowledge, Artforum, Threepenny Review, London Review of Books, Politicks, The Wire, San Francisco Focus, Texte Zur Kunst, Puncture, Harper's, New West, and California.

These are Edmund Wilson-quality essays, and...