Person

Greil Marcus

Bylines

The Devil Had Nothing to Do With It

“Robert Johnson was one of the most inventive geniuses of all time,” wrote Bob Dylan. “We still haven’t caught up with him.”

by Greil Marcus via New York Review of Books on November 13, 2020
The Brotherhood of Rock

The story of how The Band, in Robbie Robertson's words, "acted out an ideal of democracy and equality."

by Greil Marcus via New York Review of Books on March 2, 2017

Under the Red, White, and Blue: Patriotism, Disenchantment, and the Stubborn Myth of the Great Gatsby

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Illustration taken from The Great Gatsby, The Graphic Novel

Greil Marcus Takes a Deep Dive Into "the Stubborn Myth of The Great Gatsby"

An insightful exploration of the ways America has read ‘the Great American Novel.’

by Allen Barra via The National Book Review on July 17, 2020

An image of Bob Dylan performing with a spotlight on him.

Tangled Up in Bob Stories: A Dylan Reading List

The author reflects on his own journey with Dylan, and shares some of his favorite pieces of Dylanology.

by Aaron Gilbreath via Longreads on June 24, 2020

The Chaos of Altamont and the Murder of Meredith Hunter

A lot has been written about the notorious concert, but so much of the language around it has been passive and exonerating.

by Sasha Frere-Jones via The New Yorker on March 28, 2019

Sly Stone with daughter Nove, ca. 1980.

On the Sly

A memoir of the Family Stone.

by Carl Wilson via Bookforum on December 4, 2023

Illustration of McCormick at his desk, hunched over a typewriter.

Hellhounds on His Trail

Mack McCormick’s long, tortured quest to find the real Robert Johnson.

by Michael Hall via Texas Monthly on April 4, 2023

A "High Water" sign mirrored in front of a black and white portrait of two Black men standing in front of a boat on the water

Songs for a South Underwater

After the 1927 Great Flood, Black musicians from the Delta produced an outpour of songs testifying to the destruction. The same is true today.

by Sergio Lopez via Scalawag on February 11, 2022

Painting of a Puritan family sitting around a table with books.

Read More Puritan Poetry

Coming to love Puritan poetry is an odd aesthetic journey. It's the sort of thing you expect people partial to bowties and gin gimlets to get involved with.

by Ed Simon via The Millions on February 4, 2022

Colorful illustration of Larry Norman, haloed by yellow.

The Unlikely Endurance of Christian Rock

The genre has been disdained by the church and mocked by secular culture. That just reassured practitioners that they were rebels on a righteous path.

by Kelefa Sanneh via The New Yorker on September 17, 2018

The Ambivalence of Appropriation

A new book by Eric Lott frames white appropriation of blackness as containing the possibility of greater racial solidarity.

by Noah Hansen via Public Books on March 29, 2018

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