Reviews for Readings in popular culture

The average rating for Readings in popular culture based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2008-04-28 00:00:00 Timothy Clark First read this when I was a stupid kid; it probably left me a little less stupid (as a "punk," I was mystified by the near-constant references to and raptures on Springsteen). Reading it again now leaves me a great deal less stupid. This book is proof of the power of just this sort of criticism. The impassioned and informed critique of popular culture is not just another manifestation of that culture, but, at least potentially, a far more powerful account of the times in which it was produced than any record of those times could be. As an explication of its time and place (the 1980s in America), this book succeeds where "Lipstick Traces" tried and failed (that book was supposed to be a "Secret History of the 20th c."). Marcus frequently pulls apart the recordings he is writing about into unrecognizable pieces, but his assemblage is so convincing, so persuasive, that listening again to them, it is possible to hear some of what motivated him to write these pieces. Certainly, one has to believe that something motivated these musicians to do what they did. Marcus is, so far, the most lucid thinker I have read when it comes to the motivations of the punk moment. He goes beyond the situational into the motivational, and in so doing, looks at the society in which these things are happening, giving us (his readers, many years later) a record of that society that is easily apprehensible through the art created out of it.

Review # 2 was written on 2009-12-09 00:00:00 Danielle Weeks This would be a lot better if one out of every two articles wasn't about Gang of Four.