atwood and elvis.

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reading both atwood and marcus at the same time, i get to this:

from marcus: not long into the future when the USA has come the republic of Gilead, a theocracy that has replaced the Constituion of the United States with the Bible, a slave sings forbidden music to herself:"i feel so lonely , baby/I feel so lonely babdy/ i feel so lonely I could die. She doesnt know where it comes from.

now elvis isnt reall about music anymore, he is everywhere, a white trash mystic, the colsest america has ever come to theresa d'avila, a sexualised miracuolus thing....and i imagine atwood-i like atwood, ive read a huge chunk of her work, but she strikes me as brittle, as opposed to popular culture, as against the idea of raptoous intervention.

thinking about the passage, about moving b/w divine and secualr pleasure; between race, class, pleasure, in a reflection that is so small and so tiny, she restores him---and restores the idea of popular culture as subversive...this seems so against her veign...her books tend to be white, middle class, self contained, unrelenting in how men and women examine power, hemegenious in a way that elvis wasnt--then why such a brilliant, if so slight (thats why its brilliant) few words that contain all of the mixed up buisess that peter gurlanisick manages to fail at over 1500

can you imagine atwood fucking, can you imagine her even listening to elvis, looking at her work, does it seem that she interacts wtih popular culture with anything but derision...

lets talk about this.

― anthony easton (anthony), Friday, 17 June 2005 00:33 (twenty years ago)

I may be completely making this up but I thought there was a short story, like a reminisence by M Atwood about an early boyfriend and riding in his car listening to pop music. I think the boyfriend is called Buddy. True, she doesn't like him much at all. I can easily picture her writing about music and how it struck her when she was young though, so much that I am sure I've read it somewhere.

― isadora (isadora), Friday, 17 June 2005 01:00 (twenty years ago)

The Gilead stuff is from Atwood not Marcus, right? Or does Marcus reference The Handmaid's Tale (genuinely curious)?

― Sundar (sundar), Friday, 17 June 2005 01:07 (twenty years ago)

Is "now Elvis isn't really about music..." from Marcus (seems a little unlikely to me) or your view? And why would he not still be about music? He's about other things as well for sure.

― Sundar (sundar), Friday, 17 June 2005 01:10 (twenty years ago)

anthony is quoting marcus's "dead elvis," which includes that atwood quote (without commentary). it's a good book, one of the best on elvis (and i think the guralnick bios are valuable too, for very different reasons), full of great quotes.

― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Friday, 17 June 2005 03:59 (twenty years ago)

he references handmaids tale

― anthony easton (anthony), Friday, 17 June 2005 04:07 (twenty years ago)

Atwood's an Ontarian, maybe her future projection of America comes from United Empire Loyalist contempt/paranoia

― dave q (listerine), Friday, 17 June 2005 16:06 (twenty years ago)

What's the anthem of the UEL anyway?

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Friday, 17 June 2005 16:07 (twenty years ago)

dave--i would think that too, and if that was the case, then wouldnt her reaction be like my grandmother (UEL/IODE) thinking that elvis was silly, not subversive or strange, but just silly.

― anthony easton (anthony), Friday, 17 June 2005 17:39 (twenty years ago)

Manifest Destiny is a lot of things but 'silly' ain't one of them! Particularly in Ontario where they think the War of 1812 happened last week

― dave q (listerine), Friday, 17 June 2005 17:47 (twenty years ago)

do you think that atwood and the uel folx view american popular culture as an extension of mannifest destiny

if that is the case then why would she view him as subversive at the same time

wouldnt they be part of the same machine

― anthony easton (anthony), Friday, 17 June 2005 18:44 (twenty years ago)

now elvis isnt reall about music anymore, he is everywhere, a white trash mystic, the colsest america has ever come to theresa d'avila, a sexualised miracuolus thing

Not strictly true. There's a pre-Elvis southern tradition, with songs about Christ written in terms of meeting with a loved one in a secret garden. And that tradition survives in contemporary Christian music -- a Washington City Paper reviewer claimed CeCe Winans' song "Alabaster Box" is really about female ejaculation.

― j.lu (j.lu), Friday, 17 June 2005 19:00 (twenty years ago)

but there is code that happens before in secualr music, that doesnt nessc. occur w. the others

― anthony easton (anthony), Friday, 17 June 2005 23:30 (twenty years ago)

atwood is hardly opposed to popular culture, read cat's eye or robber bride or any of her personal essays, i think the image of her as some kind of ivory tower snobbington is very different from the reality of her

― Haikunym (Haikunym), Friday, 17 June 2005 23:34 (twenty years ago)

i have read robber bride, and a huge chunk of the essays, i think that thruout it she feels uncomfortable about (at least) the ubquity (of often sexualised) popular culture--cf oryx and crake.

can you tell me why robbers bride, or which essays?

― anthony easton (anthony), Saturday, 18 June 2005 00:14 (twenty years ago)

because in robber bride and cat's eye too the characters are real women who live in a real world, drink wine and watch TV; one does not need to embrace everything about popular culture to acknowledge that it is all around us

there's a great essay about one of her early jobs in the 1950s, she was a cash register girl or something, her boss was a freak, it's chock full of 50s details and clothes and music and stuff, don't remember the name of the essay though

― Haikunym (Haikunym), Saturday, 18 June 2005 00:18 (twenty years ago)

also in 'surfacing' the characters try to escape the world by living in some kind of weird world, it's not seen as a positive thing at all

― Haikunym (Haikunym), Saturday, 18 June 2005 00:20 (twenty years ago)

As I said to Anthony by AIM, Atwood is the absolute perfect age (b.1939) for Elvis in particular to have had a colossal impact on her. We could assume that that song or Elvis in general still hold a potent charge for her; we could assume that the line Greil quotes is Atwood making use of the power of cheap music - or both, or in between, or something else, like her acknowledging and using the importance Elvis has for others without sharing the feeling.

Is this the difficulty of seeing an old woman, an intellectual, an immensely respectable woman, one of the most distinguished representatives of Canadian culture, as containing a young woman who likes Elvis and, indeed, fucking?

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Saturday, 18 June 2005 10:07 (twenty years ago)

i can belive that about lots of women, but most of them dont tend to be distinguished representatives of Canadian culture--in the great dylan/beatles split of the early 60s, i think she sided with baez...if that means anything

― anthony easton (anthony), Saturday, 18 June 2005 10:36 (twenty years ago)

Some of you may be having the same trouble. I thought I knew you: We'd become well acquainted over the past 55 years. You were the Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck comic books I read in the late 1940s. You were the radio shows -- Jack Benny, Our Miss Brooks. You were the music I sang and danced to: the Andrews Sisters, Ella Fitzgerald, the Platters, Elvis. You were a ton of fun.

in her letter to america, first ppgh

she then says for the rest of the article, about how much she is scared of america, how she views the power of america from the beginning as dangerous and destructive, its almost like she doesnt trust elvis

― anthony easton (anthony), Saturday, 18 June 2005 10:41 (twenty years ago)

why SHOULD she trust elvis a.k.a. america? trusting it /= enjoying it occasionally and/or understanding its power

― Haikunym (Haikunym), Saturday, 18 June 2005 16:14 (twenty years ago)

trust is the bad word, but i think that she doesnt enjoy it and also, i dont think that i have only found one place where she truly understands the power.

― anthony easton (anthony), Saturday, 18 June 2005 19:31 (twenty years ago)

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