Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the Twentieth Century

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Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the Twentieth Century

by Greil Marcus

3.94 · rating details · 1,041 ratings · 98 reviews

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Greil Marcus, author of "Mystery Train," widely acclaimed as the best book ever written about America as seen through its music, began work on this new book out of a fascination with the Sex Pistols: that scandalous antimusical group, invented in London in 1975 and dead within two years, which sparked the emergence of the culture called punk. "I am an antichrist " shouted singer Johnny Rotten--where in the world of pop music did that come from? Looking for an answer, with a high sense of the drama of the journey, Marcus takes us down the dark paths of counterhistory, a route of blasphemy, adventure, and surprise.

This is no mere search for cultural antecedents. Instead, what Marcus so brilliantly shows is that various kinds of angry, absolute demands--demands on society, art, and all the governing structures of everyday life--seem to be coded in phrases, images, and actions passed on invisibly, but inevitably, by people quite unaware of each other. Marcus lets us hear strange yet familiar voices: of such heretics as the Brethren of the Free Spirit in medieval Europe and the Ranters in seventeenth-century England; the dadaists in Zurich in 1916 and Berlin in 1918, wearing death masks, chanting glossolalia; one Michel Mourre, who in 1950 took over Easter Mass at Notre-Dame to proclaim the death of God; the Lettrist International and the Situationist International, small groups of Paris--based artists and writers surrounding Guy Debord, who produced blank-screen films, prophetic graffiti, and perhaps the most provocative social criticism of the 1950s and '60s; the rioting students and workers of May '68, scrawling cryptic slogans on city walls and bringing France to a halt; the Sex Pistols in London, recording the savage "Anarchy in the U.K." and "God Save the Queen."

Although the Sex Pistols shape the beginning and the end of the story, "Lipstick Traces" is not a book about music; it is about a common voice, discovered and transmitted in many forms. Working from scores of previously unexamined and untranslated essays, manifestos, and filmscripts, from old photographs, dada sound poetry, punk songs, collages, and classic texts from Marx to Henri Lefebvre, Marcus takes us deep behind the acknowledged events of our era, into a hidden tradition of moments that would seem imaginary except for the fact that they are real: a tradition of shared utopias, solitary refusals, impossible demands, and unexplained disappearances. Written with grace and force, humor and an insistent sense of tragedy and danger, "Lipstick Traces" tells a story as disruptive and compelling as the century itself.

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Paperback, 20th Anniversary Edition, 482 pages

Published November 15th 2009 by Belknap Press (first published April 5th 1989)

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Jul 29, 2008

Derek rated it

· review of another edition

As a scholarly work, this is some post-modern mush-brained twaddle.

Dude...John of Leyden...John Lydon!...Whoa! Take a rip from the history bong!

It seems to be a gateway drug to Situationism, May '68, etc. for a lot of folks, which is of value.

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Feb 01, 2009

Gaelan D'costa rated it

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Shelves: philosophy, music, culture, post-modern

What a bastard! Greil Marcus 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 an...more

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May 15, 2007

Jared Colley rated it

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Recommends it for: those interested in avant-garde, dadaism, situationism, punk

Shelves: history, culturalstudies

This book is so many things: (1) a non-linear history of the avant-garde, (2) a broad critique of the everyday life of mid/late capitalist society, (3) an account of punk, anarchy, and the historical/cultural roots of such phenomena, (4) a work of art perhaps?

This book is not for everyone, however. It is, at times, a frustrating, incoherent read - an experiment in historical scholarship. Malcom McLaren himself states that Marcus' book "was a crazy, wild, at times almost inarti...more

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May 07, 2007

space rated it

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Recommends it for: IDIOTS

Marcus not only gets most of it WRONG, he seems intent on politicizing the expressly apolitical (early p-rock). My opinion of this book has always been colored by the fact that this guy is a clown... a fucking PRO-SITU ROCK CRITIC, someone that Debord would've punched in the fucking face (I know this cause I corresponded with Guy- and he agreed this pot-boiler is laughable... as did Jamie Reid.) No one should take this thing seriously. Fuck it off and read the original texts. Don't let this POP-...more

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Feb 25, 2007

Julie Fishkin rated it

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Recommends it for: anyone who listens to good music

Shelves: read-already

Brilliant. This imperative, Benjamin Buchloh endorsed, piece of cultural history examines, re-defines and formulates the entire history of punk movement from its inception centuries ago with various revolutionary anarchists all the way up to Malcolm McLaren and, yes, the sex pistols. He understands Guy Debords fundamental contributions to punk through the inception of the Situationists during the Paris May 68 revolts and covers everything an educated kid like you needs to know to call yourself...more

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Sep 17, 2007

John rated it

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Recommends it for: art rock kids who feel the need to trump their art history/film major roommates pop culture ace

this is a tedious book, almost a textbook. (i actually have seen it taught in universities.) at its best, lipstick is engaging in waves; at its worst it is mundane, bordering on inane, and repetitive in marcus' masturbatory doldrums. reading about subversive political turn-of-the-century art movements in france and central europe can be very interesting. there's a bit on dada if you're into that. of course marcus couldn't resist indulging himself - as is his m.o., i'm finding - with firstha...more

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Dec 26, 2011

Stewart Home rated it

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A COSMETIC UNDERGROUND

The emphasis Marcus places upon personalities ultimately nullifies any sense of individuality which his subjects might possess. The links drawn between free spirit heretics and members of the Lettriste, Situationist and PUNK movements, are forged without acknowledgement of the fact that the former lived in feudal communities while the latter were attempting to effect change within industrialised societies. Since the mental sets and social networks of individuals l...more

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Aug 29, 2011

Spac3m0nk3y rated it

I'm not sure why I picked up this book originally. It may have been due to a book review I scanned through. At any rate, I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. One of the reasons I liked it was because I thought the thesis of the book was original. Greil Marcues attempts to critique western culture through the prism of pop music and art. To do this he goes back to some avante garde art movements in Europe that later influenced punk rock bands like The Sex Pistols and The Clash. The latter...moreI'm not sure why I picked up this book originally. It may have been due to a book review I scanned through. At any rate, I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. One of the reasons I liked it was because I thought the thesis of the book was original. Greil Marcues attempts to critique western culture through the prism of pop music and art. To do this he goes back to some avante garde art movements in Europe that later influenced punk rock bands like The Sex Pistols and The Clash. The latter bands were and are familiar to most readers nowadays, but the precursors to their work such as the Dadaists, Lettrists, and Situationalists are not. Or if one is familiar with these art movements, there isn't much out there to describe their history in the high detail found in this book. I was interested in knowing where punk rock came from outside of the impulses and history of the punk rocks band themselves, and this book makes the case that their style of music came from. Now I'm not talking about a simple explanation like punk rock learned their ideas from these earlier movements, but rather, what punk rock was doing was not that different than other movements before punk rock, framing this musical phenomenon in a much more sophisticated and interesting light than one might be inclined to believe about punk rock. Often people write punk rock off as juvenile stupidity, which it is on one level I suppose, but it is just a continuation, according to Marcus, of heretics in the middle ages, anti-religious zealots in the 50s, and Parisian anti-artists. In other words, the point of this book is that modern art is not really as new as we may think. History shaped what we often think of now, depending on your point of view, as silly, excessive, even frightening reactions against the norms of conventional society. Is it just pure destructiveness or is there a justifiable point behind the mayhem?
For me, I think Marcus was right to uncover some of the hidden depth behind modern art, so-called postmodernism, and punk rock. This stuff has been going on for a long time and we're just seeing the latest incarnation of it. Society has always put excessive and unwarranted pressure on people, and revolt and rebellion comes in many forms throughout the ages. Now some teenage skater discovering punk rock for the first time may sense there is some significance to their music; this book really helps back up that intuition, and give some respectability to what is often viewed as offal. I mean even offal serves a purpose too does it not? You need to shove people's faces in the shit sometimes, especially when they're a part of your problem in their apathetic ignorance about how society really works.
At any rate, I give this book four stars because it is an original history of art and music, and a unique critique of western culture. If you love modern music and art this book will explain why it has a timeless quality after all, despite all the body fluids, gashing wounds, and spitting. (less)

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Mar 15, 2010

Betsy marked it as to-read · review of another edition

***Greil Marcus is coming to Skylight Books in May to do a reading for his new book. Time finally to read all of Lipstick Traces?

Details:
http://www.skylightbooks.com/event/greil...
Friday May 7, 2010
GREIL MARCUS discusses and signs "WHEN THAT ROUGH GOD GOES RIDING"
Start: 7:30 pm
End: 9:30 pm
When That Rough God Goes Riding: Listening to Van Morrison (PublicAffairs)

We're thrilled to announce that Greil Marcus, music and culture cr...more

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Aug 16, 2011

Malcolm MacLean rated it

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Shelves: cultural-studies

A fabulous history of the cultural trends that became punk, tracing the underground cultures of 20th century Europe (and with a great soundtrack, if you can find it). Marcus has presented us with a significant contribution to cultural history at two levels - he has traced the 20th century history of a set of disruptive cultural movements from Dada through Surrealism, Lettrism, and Situationism to Punk. His grasp of the movements and of their political and philosophical foundations is monumental ...moreA fabulous history of the cultural trends that became punk, tracing the underground cultures of 20th century Europe (and with a great soundtrack, if you can find it). Marcus has presented us with a significant contribution to cultural history at two levels - he has traced the 20th century history of a set of disruptive cultural movements from Dada through Surrealism, Lettrism, and Situationism to Punk. His grasp of the movements and of their political and philosophical foundations is monumental and the case he makes for the links betwen these art and political movements (although that may be too strong a term for things such as Lettrism) is compelling and although others such as Stuart Home (with his discussion of the genealogy of groups such as Class War) or Hakim Bey (with his philosophy of Immediatism) have drawn on similar sets of ideas, this remains the most comprehensive and impressively analysis of the politics of 20th century cultural disruption which also has the advantage of avoiding modernist and elitist notions of those as avant-garde movements.

At a second level his is a challenge to many of the ways we do history, especially cultural history which so often deals with elites, with high culture and the like. There is no doubt that the groups he is exploring here are elites, are unorthodox, are well outside the mainstream - but crucially they are not groups that are validated or valued by those with power, and indeed in some cases such as the Situationists found themselves actively fighting those in and with power, while others such as the Lettrists were so obscure and abstract that few if any knew they existed let alone what they were on about. But the point is that these undergrounds do, from time to time, surface - as we saw with the four key 'movements' here, Dada, Surrealism, Situationism and Punk - while they may and often do have a much more profound general impact (which I realise it taking me close to some of the truisms of analyses of the avant-garde). The point is not the extent to which these movements were well known or had an impact though, but that they existed, that they mounted philosophical and political challenges and debates, that they in some ways articulate a zeitgeist/i> and for those reasons tell us much about their times, while Marcus's sensitivity to how the various protagonists told their own stories further draws out their cultural politics, their archaeologies, and their forms of self-creation and the control of memory.

Of course, it is not a 'perfect' case – they don't exist – and I could challenge the book’s tendency to reify and almost deify Punk. That said, it challenges our understandings of 20th century art, politics, culture in ways that demand we revisit what so often seems the ephemerality of the popular, the everyday, and seemingly trivial, obscure, inane, and frankly ‘weird’ and explore their links, growth and significance. Most obviously, it demands that we think anew about what makes up the sphere we think if as politics and the relevance of both pleasure and the absurd – after all, it was the Situationists who told us in what seemed and absurdity, sous les pavés, la plage.

Read it!(less)

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Dec 20, 2010

Steve Rosenstein rated it

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First of all, is the history all that secret? Maybe to Americans who are completely ignorant of European art movements of the twentieth century, but dada, surrealism, and the Situationists aren't all that obscure to anyone with at least a passing interest in cultural history, and even if you have no idea what any of those words mean, this really isn't the book to educate yourself with. About 20% of the material here is fascinating, and the other 80% is Marcusbabble, the type of prose where you...more

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Sep 01, 2011

Ted Burke rated it

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Marcus is obsessed with secret histories as manifested in the inchoate habits of a populations seeking to amuse and distract themselves, and his decades-worth of rants, ruminations and reiterations wherein he tried to wed his original concern with rock and roll as an inevitable counter cultural force that galvanized various energies that would, finally, transform the world in very Hegelian way with the larger aims of politics and social theory, we are met with decidedly mixed results; lots of in...moreMarcus is obsessed with secret histories as manifested in the inchoate habits of a populations seeking to amuse and distract themselves, and his decades-worth of rants, ruminations and reiterations wherein he tried to wed his original concern with rock and roll as an inevitable counter cultural force that galvanized various energies that would, finally, transform the world in very Hegelian way with the larger aims of politics and social theory, we are met with decidedly mixed results; lots of insight, extended bits of associative brilliance that only a word-drunk can manage, but as thesis, as an articulated examination of what is happening in our world typified by art, music, demonstrations, technological upheaval, the good author falls short.

Lipstick Traces, of all his work, is the best example of what he does, and I would recommend it to the reader is interested in reading the poetic extrapolations of a writer who thinks that he's found something significant in the rock and pop album he bought --things as significant as the books he read in college--who cannot,or will not, stop microscopically examining the examples he brings up and construct a theory on which his metaphors can rest.

Marcus seems to assume that the theory is implicit in the examples he pulls from the dustbin, but he makes the mistake of forgetting that he is supposed to be writing criticism, not poetry. Implicit is the idea that there are discrete but discoverable bits of spontaneous resistance in the arts to the dominant ideologies that control the money, the armies and navys, the cops, that are leading civilization to a blind-sided destruction; that it is human nature to reinvent the world in forms and concept that attempt to break an enforced world view. Marcus links Cabaret Voltaire, Dada, Rock and Roll, French Cinema and , of course, Situation-ism into this scheme, but he never makes his case convincing beyond the obvious need for him to believe it himself. It seems a beautifully rendered bit of what might have been. (less)

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Jan 29, 2010

Derek Martin rated it

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Still reading it, but it's pretty interesting so far. I enjoy the writing style even though it does jump around a bit. The sentences are complete and coherent, but the narrative exhibits a cut-up type of technique, punctuated by headlines - it does remind me of the Aeolus chapter of Ulysses (but it is much easier reading than Joyce). It pays to re-read certain sections once you move a bit further on.

This book glorifies the music and its importance a bit too much at times - but linki...more Still reading it, but it's pretty interesting so far. I enjoy the writing style even though it does jump around a bit. The sentences are complete and coherent, but the narrative exhibits a cut-up type of technique, punctuated by headlines - it does remind me of the Aeolus chapter of Ulysses (but it is much easier reading than Joyce). It pays to re-read certain sections once you move a bit further on.

This book glorifies the music and its importance a bit too much at times - but linking the poses and attitudes of early punk with the Situationists and other philosophical antecedents is a great idea that does form some real connections. I love love love the Sex Pistols, it's that dirty guitar tone that gets me most. This book has increased my respect for Malcolm McLaren, the man really was well-read, and so far seems to be the only real link between early punk and the outsider philosophers Marcus discusses. His honesty about the whole thing being a scam is great too, especially since so many people have taken the idea of punk and developed this snobby, holier-than-thou, idiotic, amateurism-glorifying, exclusive stance from it. I like breaking down boundaries and creating new ideas and connections, I like intensity, I like beautiful noise. I don't like attitudes, I don't like exclusive-ism, I am not impressed by willful amateurism. So clearly, there are a lot of things about punk that I love, and a lot of things that I hate.

As I said, this book glorifies the music and the attitude of punk, as well as the stance of willful amateurism, in ways that only a partisan can. Nonetheless, Marcus does recognize that while purporting to expose and stand against the banalities and the insularity of society at large, punk adopted its own set of banalities and its own brand of insularity from the very beginning.

Of course, now that we are living in the days of pop-punk and fashionable, so-called indie rock, it's probably worse than ever. The Harvard Press published this book in 1990, so Marcus had yet to witness to what extent there would be not just ignorant lemmings jumping on the subculture bandwagon so as to make themselves believe they were unique, but also how much the mainstream would co-opt and adopt these stances and fashions so that now you have the musical and philosophical equivalent of Britney Spears and bubblegum pop being presented as punk - pop-punk,emo and indie boy bands and girl bands and the like. Quotes from McLaren throughout this book indicate that he always envisioned his band as teen idols, that the idea of a revolution through a pop culture medium was, even if it could spread the popularity, or at least popular knowledge, of revolutionary ideas, essentially a scam. Nonetheless I would gladly take his teen idols over today's teen idols any day. Even if their cynicism was not well thought out, seeming more like a bratty, negative stance than rigorous social criticism, it was an original stance at the time and one that truly shocked the old guard (for no good reason), which is quite amusing to read about in Lipstick Traces. Also their music rocked. The crappy "punk" bands of today do sometimes get some good guitar tones I will admit - their producers, sound engineers and record company reps must be telling the kids which kinds of guitars and amps to play - but they overlay it with that crappy, sentimental radio-friendly sound, making it unlistenable, and even crappier lyrics, making it vomit-inducing. Then you have hardcore bands, a charade for the most part. There's really not much music out there nowadays calling itself punk that is good. The revolution was swallowed up, as they knew it would be. Every now and then it pops out again, but once it does, you can feel the impending doom. The moment it breaks into the consciousness of the widest set of people, in that same moment opens up the black hole that will envelope it, and before it even does, it manufactures the clones who will replace it, gradually introducing the clones to the mass consciousness, one after the other, until the original spark has been quietly removed and the mass consciousness, none the wiser, is happily sated with the clones who remove any hint of aesthetic or political revolution in the original ideas and use them as mere fashion accessories to dress up the tired, old ideas that the mass consciousness was seeking to maintain all along. I came of age in the early 90s, not too long after this book was released, so I was witness to an excellent example of this cycle playing itself out once more. I appreciate Marcus presenting me with its antecedent, which I have heard a certain previous generation harp on at great length many times (as most older generations are wont to do), and for taking it back even further to speculative antecedents that are now only remembered by devoted students of fine arts, art theory and philosophy.

Thus whatever I may say about the shallowness and insularity of many counter-culture revolutions, or at least of a good number of those who take part in them, whatever the so-called practical-minded will say about the ridiculousness of presenting a new set of aesthetic ideas and ideological stances through a pop culture medium, or for that matter through any artistic medium or any medium other than the earthly plane of existence in the here and now and the political and economic structures which control it, punk rock and its descendants produced (and continue to produce, despite the claims of heritage from them laid by vast amounts of crap) a great amount of variety and interesting ideas and sonic textures. Punk, hardcore, post-punk, new wave, modern rock, alternative - all the weird variants within those. All the intelligence, politics, alluring aesthetics, experimentalism, pounding rhythm and energy that came into music since. There are so many bands and artists that took music to really cool places. They celebrated the amateur the way the amateur should be celebrated, as one who can approach the medium from a perspective free of the set tendencies that institutionalized instruction ingrains, and from that amateur perspective they developed a wholly original brand of virtuosity.

I am inclined to think that in the modern world, where we are understanding through history that bloody revolution will not only mistreat vast numbers of people, but probably won't even achieve our aims, where we are still trying to work out all the snags that catch people's economic, political and psychological conditions in modern society, that perhaps pop culture and artistic culture in general - the vast entertainment industry - really is a great place to wage the war of ideas.(less)

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Jan 30, 2012

Christopher rated it

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Before I forget: turns out Hurlements en faveur de Sade is on YouTube. Of all things: www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJvFOUU6QS4

It is difficult to impossible to overstate how important this book is to me. When I first read it I was already passingly familiar with Debord, situationism, dada and, of course, British punk rock (North American punk is completely excised from this account) and I had an idea that they were somewhat related. I was looking for this book to explicate those ideas; ins...moreBefore I forget: turns out Hurlements en faveur de Sade is on YouTube. Of all things: www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJvFOUU6QS4

It is difficult to impossible to overstate how important this book is to me. When I first read it I was already passingly familiar with Debord, situationism, dada and, of course, British punk rock (North American punk is completely excised from this account) and I had an idea that they were somewhat related. I was looking for this book to explicate those ideas; instead I found a book I've been unable to shake long past my radical and punk days.

This book is less about any of the above, and more to do with humanity's innate desire to destroy itself, and the notions of freedom found within destruction. It focuses on acts of refusal - against church, capitalism, artistic masterpieces, popular entertainment, whathaveyou - because in those no's are found to be tantalizing yesses, "a new way of walking and a new way of talking," as Marcus explicates. That it uses all of these things - as well as the Starkweather murders, the Invasion of Notre Dame, and a Penguins song - is only done in the service of a basic throb of negation, "a debt that history owes that all of the actors have forgotten." Rather than arithmetically connecting the situationist to Malcom McLaren to Johnny Rotten to John of Lydon, Marcus senses something baser than that, connecting historical actors who poorly understood or never heard of each other in an attempt to find something more psychological, something about the human condition that as yet has gone unarticulated. Or, at least, poorly articulated until British punk bands began pressing 45's, "which is why they sound like the greatest thing in the world while they're playing."

There are vastly more lucid accounts of situationism, punk, and the latter's aesthetic debt to the former; I highly recommend Savage's England's Dreaming for the latter, and Leaving the 20th Century for the former. But as an attempt to do what, exactly, the punk movement does - to change the discussion of punk rock beyond Thatcherism and purposeful crudity, beyond cross-Atlantic rivalries, to find a new way of walking and a new way of talking - this book succeeds more than it doesn't. One of the very best books I've ever read.
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May 02, 2007

Xio rated it

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Shelves: booksfrommy20s, historysociologyetc

When I first read this I was so excited someone had managed to reasonably accumulate so much of this particular variety of comparative history. I recall being impressed by ideas moving through history, time and again there being such movements toward liberty of self expression.

I believe recent times reflect that pattern in an oddly popular manner. Its been assimilated somehow via capitalism or something commercial. Now it seems as though the people who in past times might have been s...more

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Apr 04, 2010

Rob rated it

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Shelves: non-fiction, history, criticism, read-in-2010

This book is a sensory experience. Greil Marcus traces the history of 20th-century counterculture using text, images, marginalia, and (at least if you're a compulsive YouTuber like me) sound. His prose style is also attractive, beautiful and disjointed, making the whole thing feel less like a history book and more like a drug trip. The connections and arguments Marcus makes are kind of strained, but on the other hand clear logic would seem out of place here. And even if you don't appreciate ...more

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Jul 27, 2011

Darran Mclaughlin added it · review of another edition

So boring that I had to stop when I was two thirds of the way through. In spite of the pain I was trying to persevere just because I would like to know more about Dada and the Situationists but it just wasn't worth it. This book is an uncomfortable melange of rock writing and more serious stuff about art and theory, but it just ends up falling between two stools being neither entertaining nor intellectual enough enough.

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Jun 29, 2011

Julia rated it

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(mdc) it's about the situationists and guy debord, punk rock, the last sex pistols concert, lettrist international, a whole lot of post punk and some other stuff too. really interesting and the author is one of my favorites but it's pretty all over the place - like one minute it's paris in 1889 and then all of a sudden it's an x show in los angeles. i kept having to stop and re-orient myself! took me forever to read.

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Jan 06, 2011

Joe rated it

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I loved this book. Does a great job of unearthing and contextualizing various strains of Dada, the surrealists, the letterists, the Letterist International, the Situationists, the '68 Paris uprising, and-- ultimately-- the Sex Pistols and their immediate kin. A fun, intelligent tour of twentieth century insurrections of immediacy.

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Jan 31, 2009

Johnny D rated it

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a strange tour through the subconscious of the twentieth century, convincingly connecting dada to punk, leaving a lipstick trace of influence on each, and confirming my long-held suspicion that punk did not die, it rather went underground as a "minority report" in philosophy.

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Jan 09, 2012

Artephius rated it

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Reading a Greil Marcus book is like reading a bowl of stew. A lot of repetitive spoon moving, punctuated by the occasional tasty bit. I was surprised that colonial Massachusetts religious leader Jonathan Edwards got a mention, but I can't for the life of me explain Marcus's intentions there, or what connective tissue was implied. That's the real stewy part. You're reading along, practically chewing on this prose, and you realize you don't know what's been said in the last 3 pages. Usually it's t...more

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Feb 02, 2011

Michael Grasso rated it

Finished today. Was less about punk than I wanted, but the more I read about Paris in the postwar period the more (surprise surprise) I want to run an occult urbanomantic/psychogeographical revolutionary game there among the Existentialists and Lettrists and Situationists.

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Oct 03, 2010

DoctorM rated it

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Shelves: pop-culture, art

One of those books you can spend days and days exploring--- filled with references to music, historical events, lost and obscure thinkers, arcane art and political movements. A book purportedly about punk and its historical antecedents, but one that tries to go beyond music to look at Situationism and post-1945 anomie and the whole underground world of film and art and rage building up through the postwar years and into the Seventies. How can you not like a book that links the Anabaptists of Mue...more

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Sep 23, 2011

Scott McWaters rated it

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Shelves: non-fiction

This cover is not what my dust jacket looks like!!!! I think this ISBN or this cover image is wrong. Dense and intellectual but worth the effort. See how the popular culture subverts and exploits all revolutionary movements.

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Apr 22, 2009

Matt rated it

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Why this wasn't on my list already is beyond me. Perhaps my favorite book of all time, but that's a ridiculous thing to say about any book. "A durned good'un" sounds a lot better to me. Pick it up today you slug, you deserve it!

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Dec 09, 2008

Vivian rated it

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I understand why Lipstick Traces is brilliant and, moreover, important, but the fact that Richard Hell doesn't even make it into the index is a major red flag. Love the writing, just not always the scholarship.

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Jul 19, 2011

Jason King rated it

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A great music, art, and philosophy criticism/history book. This book examines the perhaps non-existant links between various anti-establishment art, philosophy, and music movements of the 1900s.

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Mar 14, 2010

Bob rated it

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the best sort of rock n roll book of all time, w/the possible exception of the Bangs, a history of what rock music should mean and why punk was so fucking cool

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Aug 11, 2008

Dave rated it

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Recommends it for: Anybody with the barest interest in how we get from there to here....

Knotty, cerebral, convoluted and challenging - as any "comprehensive" study of Twentieth Century Western Culture would be. The most diverse period in world history, and Marcus applies his impressive scholarly skills to unravelling and understanding at least one small corner of it.
At it's best, you will reconsider and rethink some of your most basic assumptions about where "our" music, movies and "Popular Tastes" came from.....which will inevitably affect your...more

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Jul 23, 2010

Cameron rated it

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One of the best historical narratives ever written. Unique, almost hypnotic. An author in complete command of his subject.

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About Greil Marcus

Greil Marcus is the author of Mystery
Train (1975), Lipstick Traces (1989), The Shape of Things to Come (2006), When that Rough God Goes Riding and Bob Dylan by Greil Marcus (both 2010), and other books. With Werner Sollors he is the editor of A New Literary History of America (2009). In recent years he has taught at Berkeley, Princeton, Minnesota, NYU, and the New School in New York. He live...more

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Books by Greil Marcus

Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock 'n' Roll

The Old, Weird America: The World of Bob Dylan's Basement Tapes

Like a Rolling Stone: Bob Dylan at the Crossroads

In the Fascist Bathroom: Punk in Pop Music, 1977-1992

The Shape of Things to Come: Prophecy and the American Voice

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Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the Twentieth Century

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