Daniel Wolff's Blog - Posts Tagged "greil-marcus"

In this book—so soberly inflamed that the pages seem to turn of their own accord—the history of the American 20th century is made of lodestars that don’t figure in conventional accounts: a mass death in the middle of a strike in 1913, a few songs from thirty, fifty years after, the way of life implied by their competing tales. A story begins, leaves marks on the country, then fades out. The will toward justice is the motor of Wolff’s history; its road is blocked, diverted, blown up, renamed, until one might find justice far more readily in a song than in life, and it may be that this book could not appear at a less receptive time. It is at precisely at this moment that its story will be most fully heard.
-- Greil Marcus, author “Mystery Train,” "The Old Weird America," "Three Songs, Three Singers, Three Nations."
Grown-Up Anger: The Connected Mysteries of Bob Dylan, Woody Guthrie, and the Calumet Massacre of 1913 Coming June 13