Where is Greil Marcus' column moving to?

"Today, so many years later, the shock of punk is that every good punk record can still sound like the greatest thing you've ever heard… the power in these bits of plastic, the tension between the desire that fuels them and the fatalism waiting to block each beat, the laughter and surprise in the voices, the confidence of the music, all these things are shocking now because, in its two or three minutes, each is absolute. You can't place one record above the other, not while you're listening; each one is the end of the world, the creation of the world, complete in itself."

He's like a five time Oscar winner looking for a project.

I would love to have him pitch me so that I could muster my sub-100 IQ and tell him I didn't have the space.

Salon.com deserves to leave us. My only hope is that they didn't still GM on the way out. Like some other writers I know, who got the privilege of waiting a long time for checks.

Why? I think they've done some great things. Eric Boehlert's Clear Channel series sticks out in my mind.

http://www.salon.com/ent/clear_channel/index.html

No one reads Salon. Well, at least not many of us. It's too expensive, for one. It began as a great idea and then caterwauled into a predictably shrill shill for "progressives." Frankly, as soon as it become monochromatic it got boring. The problem is that no one will tell David Talbot that to his face, apparently. I mean, if his solution was to employ the predictable rantings of dudes like Andrew Sullivan--it's not really exclusive to publish a guy who already heavily blogs--I have to think that Talbot was not the man to be leading Salon to the promised land.

2-3 years ago I might have missed Salon. But what I've noticed was that I don't miss it much at all--ever since they introduced the high subscription price, people have been leaving in droves.

Ah. There's our difference. I just paid. Go ahead, call me a sucker.

Salon is seriously about to go under. They allegedly are having trouble paying rent and are in dire need of a wealthy suitor.

Hats off to you anyway. Nighty night.

I will report back (maybe on ILE/F).

Will I learn anything?

marcus isn't particularly rockist for a guy who likes rock, actually.

amt- yes, we get it, you don't like music writers.

my friend saw him a few weeks ago and said in an email that he was "arrogant"

i was just telling adam what to expect

Big news for me, maybe not for you: Scott Woods launched a new website yesterday that will collect a lot of Marcus’s writing going back to the beginning.

http://greilmarcus.net/

He’s got about 25 posts up so far. Scott has Marcus’s cooperation, so there should be no end to the amount of stuff that turns up there. There’s so much that I haven’t read in ages, or haven’t read at all: the "Real Life"s from the Voice, the Artforum columns, book reviews from Rolling Stone, stray pieces from wherever. There was a Marcus site a few years ago (forget the name—“Attic” was in there somewhere), but there wasn’t a great deal to it beyond a few links, and it eventually disappeared. I’m hoping--and knowing Scott, I think it will--this one becomes as necessary a reference tool as Christgau’s site.

I've been helping Scott set up Grooveshark playlists based on the Stranded discography; he's doing singles, working forwards through the alphabet, and I've started on album cuts in the opposite direction.

http://grooveshark.com/#!/greilmarcus/playlists

Three or four pages in, I've already confronted three or four blues albums I didn't know at all. I've written a lot over the years about my ambivalence towards electric blues, so auditioning these records and finding a representative song has been a challenge. With the likes of Wire and the Who and Frankie Lymon, I do the honorable thing and ignore Marcus's words in favor of what I love.

A nice write-up on the site:

http://www.wonderingsound.com/news/greil-marcus-rock-critic-archive-online/

I have a kinda love/hate relationship with Marcus' writing, so I am glad to see this (even if some of it will irritate me, while other things will open me up to new thoughts and ideas and approaches and music).

This seems like a total misreading on the part of Marcus. I don't think there's anything in Wilson's article saying "the present is always more advanced". Wilson clearly says that the book critic in the 70s and the music critic in the 20s have the same dilemma: is this art going to be worthwhile enough to justify overcoming the distaste for the problematic artist? Wilson is saying the book critic, at that time in the 70s , could have had that negative prejudice against Mailer. He's not saying, "If I were a book critic then, I would have had the guts not to read Norman Mailer".
Marcus does this a lot on his "ask me a question" page: jumps to an unsupported conclusion and gives a nasty response. It's why I'd never submit a question there.

in response to just that, Marcus's answer seemed completely OTM.

― birdistheword

But what is otm about it?

Marcus does this a lot on his "ask me a question" page: jumps to an unsupported conclusion and gives a nasty response. It's why I'd never submit a question there.

You may feel he's being rude or unfair to Wilson, but he is rarely less than polite to questioners. I've followed the "Ask Greil" section pretty closely since it started four or five years ago, and you could probably count on two hands instances where his response was curt, impatient, or worse. (Which was a surprise based on interviews I've seen and the once I did myself 35 years ago.) People have written in with questions where I was positive he was going be all over them--"What's your favourite Spin Doctors song, Greil" (I made that up)--and he took a pass.

If you want to see a really capricious and sometimes volatile version of "Ask Greil," take a look at its blueprint, the "Hey Bill" section of baseball writer Bill James's site. You really needn't worry about submitting questions, though.

in retrospect the thing mailer could most be faulted for -- didion too -- is their participation in "new journalism" which (per wikipedia) emphasizes "truth" over "facts" ("clarification needed" -- you can say *that* again) and was the first step down the long rocky road to today.

If we could just collectively admit as grown adults that sometimes problematic people make great art, the discourse would 1000x more sufferable, but then Wilson et al wouldn't be able to hit those wordcounts.

I feel like Wilson just kind of wandered into Marcus's crosshairs by stating clearly and concisely an imperative of polite discourse in today's world, which is that the duty of any critic (whether of art, literature, music, etc) is to first assess how well the subject of the critic comports with contemporary mores of thought and behavior and to get the necessary caveats/trigger-warnings/moral judgments etc out of the way first before turning towards the "art", which it can never be assumed are separable from their recalcitrant political views.

But what is otm about it?

If we could just collectively admit as grown adults that sometimes problematic people make great art, the discourse would 1000x more sufferable, but then Wilson et al wouldn't be able to hit those wordcounts.

I feel like Wilson just kind of wandered into Marcus's crosshairs by stating clearly and concisely an imperative of polite discourse in today's world, which is that the "duty" [my quotation marks] of any critic (whether of art, literature, music, etc) is to first assess how well the subject of the critic comports with contemporary mores of thought and behavior and to get the necessary caveats/trigger-warnings/moral judgments etc out of the way first before turning towards the "art", which it can never be assumed are separable from their recalcitrant political views.

Another topic Marcus has talked about is art as fiction, and how so much of popular art today is interpreted and even marketed like it was autobiographical - it can be those things, but I get the feeling more and more people in the audience confuse personal with autobiographical. I bring this up because it feels related to what Marcus criticizes in his response to that excerpt, and what o. nate expresses above. Judgment of an individual isn't synonymous with art theory and criticism, and it's asinine to propose a scenario where a book critic in the '70s doesn't want to review a publication by an author of literary merit because of their personal failings. Others here have made the case that Wilson is only laying out the guidelines that defines today's discourse rather than arguing for it himself - I don't think that negates Marcus's response, only that it shouldn't be directed at Wilson personally.

And while critiquing an artist's work and scrutinized/analyzing their personal failings shouldn't be confused as the same thing, that doesn't mean you can't or shouldn't write about both, and Marcus gets to that as well:

There’s a passage on the assassination of Bobby Kennedy when Mailer at once says that when he heard about it he was with “a witch" which hit me as criminally sexist and self-absolving then, a real window into a sick soul—and that he would have cut off his arm to save Kennedy’s life, and made me believe it. To dive into why both those things could be true is criticism.

And Wilson does that.

I get the feeling that Marcus, as a writer himself, is very hesitant to discuss the personal issues of the people he writes about. It's notable that the Sly Stone chapter of Mystery Train focusses on the Stagger Lee archetype but never mentions drug abuse/addiction.

i can't speak for marcus but i found it odd that wilson proposed a thought experiment in which he was a book critic in the mid-1970s asked to write about norman mailer and automatically assumed that he, wilson, would have had the Correct Stance, which includes awareness that mailer "wrote massively screwed-up things about race and feminism." maybe he would have; on the other hand, it's entirely likely that any white guy alive and writing for a major magazine in the mid-1970s would have had his own blindspots on those subjects.

marcus has said many times that he's not interested in musicians' personal lives, doesn't care if -- for example -- van morrison is a jerk, but i suspect he cares more than he lets on: his review of albert goldman's elvis book is probably the single angriest thing he's ever written.

Marcus's response here it total garbage, frankly!

*is, not it. I typed three annoyed paragraphs and then thought better of it. The only allegation of problematic behaviour between either Wilson or Marcus in this one-way-dialogue is Marcus's non-subtle intimations that Wilson is anti-Semitic in his dislike of Mailer

Alfred OTM.

i did not care for that passage of the kanye piece for the reasons j.d. stated but i also though marcus' response zoomed way past anything that was advocated in the essay into a zone of his own annoyed speculation, where he could not possibly be otm to anyone. what do i win

The Complete Greil Marcus library!

reading mystery train several times in a row during my college years is enough for me thanks

His Doors book is quite good - he is less personally invested than in most of his writing, and the attitude is lighter than usual, more like "let's study this unusual phenomenon".

i can't speak for marcus but i found it odd that wilson proposed a thought experiment in which he was a book critic in the mid-1970s asked to write about norman mailer and automatically assumed that he, wilson, would have had the Correct Stance, which includes awareness that mailer "wrote massively screwed-up things about race and feminism." maybe he would have; on the other hand, it's entirely likely that any white guy alive and writing for a major magazine in the mid-1970s would have had his own blindspots on those subjects.

Absolutely. It would be historical arrogance, but given what others here have posted, it's probably just sloppiness since it's doubtful Wilson would truly presume this would be his perspective in another time.

And Wilson does that.

I don't think he does that very well, and he doesn't in the passage that was presented in the original question.

we keep circling back to this (and I'm done after this post), but the act of writing this expansively about that album -- more than most of us get at other gigs -- undercuts any claims about his wanting to 'cancel' Kanye or not taking his duty as critic seriously.

in an earlier time there were many fewer publications where one could assume the readership was entirely of the left, and where ridiculous tics -- like the cataloging of an artist's moral failings as throat-clearing exercise to drive home the writer's own bona fides -- could develop.

we keep circling back to this (and I'm done after this post), but the act of writing this expansively about that album -- more than most of us get at other gigs -- undercuts any claims about his wanting to 'cancel' Kanye or not taking his duty as critic seriously

I think we keep circling back to this because as already explained, Marcus was responding only to that one excerpt sent to him, which doesn't include anything written about West or his new album - it's distorting his response to say he's suggesting Wilson is calling for West's cancellation. As for Wilson taking his duty as a critic seriously, I don't think there was ever any question about that - it was how well he was performing those duties.

considering how much televised energy norman mailer put into getting himself called sexist and tiresome by contemporaries i'm unsure he's the right poster boy for the phenomenon of ideological rearprojection marcus describes

haha yeah my opinion should also have a footnote that says "i wasn't born until a few months before the film adaptation of tough guys don't dance came out"

gore vidal implied he was an intellectual charlie manson iirc?

(i am one of mailer's three remaining superfans, but)

When did Wilson say he wanted Mailer canceled?

Again, I don't much care about whether the word "cancel" is used or not. But seeing as we're splitting hairs, I reread Marcus's final line.

Asking if it’s cool to cancel a man who is not around to speak for himself--as he surely would--is something else.

Marcus doesn't actually say that Wilson says Mailer should be cancelled; he says Wilson asks if he ought to be. Surely that's accurate.

And maybe I find that even more irritating than if he'd flat-out said Mailer is a horrible person and I can't read him anymore. I read Marcus's response and I feel something, genuine anger maybe. All I get out of Wilson is all this carefully calibrated hedging--quite the opposite of anguish. "The constant calculations," as a friend put it.

carl and the (lack of) passion(s)

So Cancelled

Cher says that to one of her classmates in Clueless, no?

Already can’t remember whose blog was called some play on Classes Are Canceled.

(wilson's pious reference to the opinion of joan didion, as if she was someone we all somehow agreed on, was so unbearable it almost made me wish i didn't like her writing.)

― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.)

Great from J.D. !

Ha, yes.

and how so much of popular art today is interpreted and even marketed like it was autobiographical

Total tangent here, but surely it's always been marketed that way? The teen idol is just the kind of nice young man that his song lyrics make him out to be, the Hollywood actress is as glamorous as her film roles, etc. Because marketing departments have always known ppl crave authenticity.

The change is that critical interpretation used to call bullshit on that more regularly imo.

I think the access we have to artists and their lives through instagram, tik tok, twitter, gossip sites, etc etc etc makes people even more wedded to the autobiographical concept then they were before (but yes it always existed)

Otm

I thought Michelle Goldberg's recent NYTimes column was astute on the "cancel culture" backlash from certain quarters:

"Many people I know over 40 - maybe 35 - resent new social mores that demand outsized sensitivity to causing harm. It has been jarring to go from an intellectual culture that prizes transgression to one that polices it. The shame of turning into the sort of old person repelled by the sensibilities of the young is a cause of real psychic pain."

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/20/opinion/generation-cancel-culture.html

I think there's a bit of that at play here. Pre-internet, the national media was like a massive stone fortress with imposing metal gates controlled by stuffy bien pensant moderates. In those days it was fun for peasants on the outside to laugh at the overcautious reactions of the gatekeepers to anything controversial or edgy. Then the fortress was razed to the ground by bloodthirsty barbarians and the peasants had to run for their lives. Laughing at the gatekeepers isn't so funny any more. The traumatized peasants have become more vigilant at policing the boundaries of polite discourse than the old corporate busybodies ever were.

Anyone down on Marcus will like the second question here:

https://greilmarcus.net/current_2021/

Agree with this, though: "And appeals to experience ('witnessing atrocities firsthand') are worthless. It’s not where an artist has been, it’s what he or she can bring back."

Lord, he was born a ramblin' man.

Marcus's new Substack has been up and running for a couple of weeks now. (Ex-ILX'or Scott Woods edits the site--he wouldn't let me put up a Facebook post, but he'll never see this.) I took out a yearly subscription, even though you probably have a few months to read it for free.

The best thing is--a requirement of being on Substack, I think--there's new content. greilmarcus.net was great, but, except for "Ask Greil," it was close to 100% archival. Just in the first two weeks, he's had a piece on Peter Jackson's Beatles film, and today a review of Dylan's new book. ("The Beatles and Dylan" some of you are exclaiming in unison. "The excitement is palpable.") And in one of the intros he wrote for the new site, he identifies the two greatest sentences he thinks he ever wrote. I think they're from Mystery Train.

https://greilmarcus.substack.com/

Thanks for the news, esp. about Scott. Will read the review after finishing the book, which I mentioned on Is Bob Dylan overrated? I'm still enjoying most of it, although the "Witcheh Woman" comments are as dumb as the song and don't mention its use in the Seinfeld ep.

Long interview up on Letter in the Ether:

https://greilmarcus.substack.com/p/the-whole-world-in-a-song

From his substack: Ask Greil

I wasn’t exactly sure in what way Swift’s Midnights was the musical equivalent of Dylan’s “autopen” scam. Could you please expand on that? —ANDREW MACDONALD

It sounds to me as if it were made by a machine, and I don’t mean Taylor Swift herself is a machine.

I think he meant the recent Billboard chart where Swift had the entire Top 10 on Billboard. Stuff like that always makes me wonder if it actually means anything.

Hey, I said (in the Midnights thread): this kind of sounds like if you asked an AI to make a Taylor Swift pop album. Move over, Marcus!!

Greil Marcus's daughter, Emily, passed away yesterday (1/31) more than two years after her diagnosis of appendiceal cancer. Per request, Greil has posted her obituary, and Robert Christgau posted a tribute to her. Her playlist for her funeral has also been posted.

If you want a free month of Marcus's Substack, let me know via ILX mail--I've got two to give away. It gives you access to a few things that are behind the paywall.

Also, his Real Life column this month leads off with a 100% vintage-Marcus entry on Biden's SOTU. If you're a fan, you'll probably love it, if you're not, you'll almost definitely cringe.