Greil Marcus - Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock n Roll Music

Images of America
in Rockn Roll Music

FIFTH REVISED EDITION

GREIL MARCUS

To Emily and Cecily
and in memory of my dear friend and editor, Bill Whitehead

PLUME

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Published by Plume, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Previously published in a Dutton edition.

First Plume Printing (Fifth Revised Edition), April 2008

Copyright Greil Marcus, 1975, 1982, 1990, 1997, 2008

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REGISTERED TRADEMARKMARCA REGISTRADA

CIP data is available.

ISBN: 978-1-101-66164-2

Original hardcover design by Nancy Etheredge

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Writing these opening notes reminds me of the prefaces to the American history books that were written during World War II, when the authors, looking back for the meaning of the Revolution or the Civil War or whatever, drew modest but determined parallels between their work and the struggle. They were affirming that their work was part of the struggle; that an attempt to understand America took on a special meaning when America was up for grabs. Those writers were also sayingat least, this is what they now say to methat to do ones most personal work in a time of public crisis is an honest, legitimate, paradoxically democratic act of common faith; that one keeps faith with ones community by offering whatever it is that one has to say. I mean that those writers were exhilarated, thirty years ago, by something we can only call patriotism, and humbled by it too.