{THE PILL BOX } spacer powered by blogger    I'm still trying to
slog a way through the new Greil Marcus.* But it just strikes me
that what was once pith, is now portenousness. What was once
razor sharp is now waffle and camoflague and ... well, I once
thought that British journo/author Gordon Burn couldnt be
bettered (or 'worsted'?) when it came to the promiscuous and
self-defeating quotation of Other Authors in a piece that was
meant to showcase your own P.O.V.  But here, taken at random,
from the opening FIVE pages of Marcus essay "on" David
Thomas/Pere Ubu/the entire footnoted inventory of every thought
that's ever occured to Greil about the entire cultural history
of everything that's ever happened in America ever, is a list of
the 'sources' he namechecks or quotes (sometimes at wearying and
obstructive length):  Edmund Wilson Isiah and Jeremiah and Amos
Norman Cohn's The Pursuit of The Millennium Nazism [and]
Stalinism [and] the Caliphate Edmund Wilson [again] the wrath of
God Tennessee Ernie Ford Sheik