Conversations with Greil Marcus

The latest subject to be added to UPM's Literary Conversations Series is Greil Marcus. Perhaps best thought of as rock critic, Marcus has been a unique and influential voice in American letters for more than four decades. In 1969 he published his first piece, a review of Magic Bus: The Who on Tour, in Rolling Stone, where he became the magazine’s first records editor. Renowned for his ongoing “Real Life Top Ten” column, Marcus has been a writer for a number of magazines and websites, and is the author and editor of eighteen books. 

Conversations with Greil Marcus is edited by Joe Bonomo and includes fourteen interviews from 1981 to 2010, covering a broad range of Marcus’s career. He discusses in lively, wide-ranging interviews his books and columns as well as his critical methodology and broad approach to his material, signaled by a generosity of spirit leavened with aggressive critical standards. 

From Bonomo's introduction:

Keith Richards has said that rock and roll is music for the neck down; Marcus has spent the better part of his career expanding that definition. Though he’s considered by most people a music critic—"Most of the time music is where I start," he concedes to David Weich. "Something musical makes a breach, opens up questions that I wind up pursuing"—these interviews illuminate Marcus’s considerable breadth of interests and knowledge.

Check Bonomo's blog, No Such Thing As Was, forother choice quotes and comments from Marcus's interviews.

Conversations with Greil Marcus is now available from UPM.