Albert Goldman's "Elvis" vs. Peter Guralnick's "Last Train to Memphis" and "Careless Love."

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Which Elvis bio is better and why?

― Steven Ward, Wednesday, 14 December 2005 15:32 (twenty years ago)

i was sure this would be a j.d. thread.

― Penis, NV (Jody Beth Rosen), Wednesday, 14 December 2005 15:38 (twenty years ago)

I wonder how long it will take for edd s hurt to get here and give them all a dressing down while injecting some local color/inside information.

― k/l (Ken L), Wednesday, 14 December 2005 15:42 (twenty years ago)

guralnick if you're an optimist and goldman if you're a pessimist

― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Wednesday, 14 December 2005 15:57 (twenty years ago)

So, Guralnick if your Elvis is half-skinny, Goldman if your Elvis is half-fat.

― k/l (Ken L), Wednesday, 14 December 2005 15:59 (twenty years ago)

Interesting ... I just started reading Guralnick's Last Train to Memphis and I have to say -- as an Elvis neophyte who probably knows more trivia or legend than the "reality" -- I'm very impressed with his writing style and his fairness to his subject.

― Tony Bleach (blackshoeswhitesocks), Wednesday, 14 December 2005 16:09 (twenty years ago)

How is "Careless Love" optimistic? It's pretty bleak and depressing.

― Keith C (lync0), Wednesday, 14 December 2005 16:19 (twenty years ago)

The Goldman one is definetely funnier.

― Ned T.Rifle (nedtrifle), Wednesday, 14 December 2005 16:41 (twenty years ago)

guralnick: a two-volume study of a Great American, suitable for display in any self-respecting library, written in robert a caro-style presidential prose by a scholar and a gentleman

goldman: a comic rant about this guy who just did ONE! INSANE! THING! AFTER! ANOTHER! WOW!

― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Wednesday, 14 December 2005 16:57 (twenty years ago)

get 'elvis: what happened' to complete the trinity!

― whatever (boglogger), Wednesday, 14 December 2005 21:02 (twenty years ago)

Goldman was a f'ing terrible writer. Guralnick could stand to loosen up some but is very good. Not even a contest.

― Matos-Webster Dictionary (M Matos), Wednesday, 14 December 2005 22:44 (twenty years ago)

I thought Guralnick's decision not to tackle the post-death Elvis a little disappointing.

― whatever (boglogger), Wednesday, 14 December 2005 22:47 (twenty years ago)

JD OTM. But Goldman was by no means a terrible writer, cf. Disco and his Lenny Bruce bio. He was bad on rock & roll.

― m coleman (lovebug starski), Thursday, 15 December 2005 11:13 (twenty years ago)

Laughs with Goldman, tears with Guralnick - take yer pick

― We Buy a Hammer For Dadaismus (Dada), Thursday, 15 December 2005 11:16 (twenty years ago)

Post-death Elvis -- Greil Marcus (who's writing runs hot and cold for me) summed it up just about perfectly with -Dead Elvis-. One of his better books, definitely. It does run into post-modern art/culture territory, which are things Guralnick (as far as I know) doesn't write about.

― James, Thursday, 15 December 2005 13:37 (twenty years ago)

"if one were to compare goldman's descriptions of jewish love in 'lenny bruce' with philip roth’s in 'portnoy' on the basis of good writing, goldman would win hands down." - victor bockris

― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Thursday, 15 December 2005 14:04 (twenty years ago)

Victor Bockris, now there is shit writer

― We Buy a Hammer For Dadaismus (Dada), Thursday, 15 December 2005 14:06 (twenty years ago)

yeah, he's pretty bad, but i sort of agree with that quote. goldman and roth were good friends, fwiw.

― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Thursday, 15 December 2005 14:08 (twenty years ago)

He liked Tiny Tim so he's alright by me... Goldman that is, not Roth, tho he might have to and still might for all I know

― We Buy a Hammer For Dadaismus (Dada), Thursday, 15 December 2005 14:11 (twenty years ago)

or might not; Goldman died around 1990

― Matos-Webster Dictionary (M Matos), Thursday, 15 December 2005 22:58 (twenty years ago)

roth still lives!

― j blount (papa la bas), Thursday, 15 December 2005 23:06 (twenty years ago)

I know that! I misread Dadaismus, whoops.

― Matos-Webster Dictionary (M Matos), Thursday, 15 December 2005 23:17 (twenty years ago)

i think goldman is the more entertaining writer, and elvis is so lurid its strange to make hagiography from him, which worries me about guralinks books--they are too pure and too clean...

― anthony easton (anthony), Friday, 16 December 2005 02:54 (twenty years ago)

Look, I've said this before, but about 50% of all you need to know about Goldman is summed up in his exchange with Gore Vidal in the mid-sixties CBS documentary The Homosexuals where Goldman minces his way through all sorts of jawdropping-even-for-the-60's velvet mafia libel (homos hate women and that's why they design such ugly clothes for them, etc.) and Vidal does his best to stop himself from saying "are you totally fucking HIGH and/or in denial?"

Yes, minces. MINCES.

― Michael Daddino (epicharmus), Friday, 16 December 2005 03:23 (twenty years ago)

BAD TASTE IS BETTER THEN GOOD TASTE

― anthony easton (anthony), Friday, 16 December 2005 03:41 (twenty years ago)

You and your love of hierarchies.

― Michael Daddino (epicharmus), Friday, 16 December 2005 03:51 (twenty years ago)

well, guralnick's trying to rescue elvis the human being from elvis the lurid cartoon, and i think that works just fine for "last train" - the young elvis was a sweet kid who really didn't deserve goldman's hateful condescension. i think goldman was an entertaining and often underrated writer but if i'd been around in 1980 i probably would've been as outraged as anyone. the goldman approach works better with the later elvis; guralnick just seems kind of stunned throughout "careless love."

― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Friday, 16 December 2005 04:44 (twenty years ago)

But then, so was Elvis.

― Pete Scholtes, Friday, 16 December 2005 06:46 (twenty years ago)

yr enough of a fag to know camp when you see it, right michael...and you know enough theory that taxonomy isnt heriachy right?

or do we have to go back to class.

― anthony easton (anthony), Friday, 16 December 2005 06:50 (twenty years ago)

Anthony, if you're going to pea-flick your thrift store theory my way, you can go fuck yourself.

― Michael Daddino (epicharmus), Friday, 16 December 2005 09:07 (twenty years ago)

Michael
I only buy haute theory.

― anthony easton (anthony), Friday, 16 December 2005 09:55 (twenty years ago)

ouch

I'm not qualified to enter this debate but from my close reading of Disco I'd vote for "denial" re: Goldman & homosexuality.

― m coleman (lovebug starski), Friday, 16 December 2005 11:27 (twenty years ago)

Since Goldman was so good about writing about how somebody died, does anybody know how he died and the details?

― Steven Ward, Friday, 16 December 2005 14:36 (twenty years ago)

Didn't he die on a plane - heart attack with some blonde girl on his arm?

― We Buy a Hammer For Dadaismus (Dada), Friday, 16 December 2005 14:38 (twenty years ago)

It's not on his site, but I think Christgau mentioned in his Goldman VV post-mortem (not really an obit) a rumor that after he died, Goldman's body stayed on the plane and got shuttled back and forth between the US and UK because no-one would come forward to claim the body.

― Michael Daddino (epicharmus), Friday, 16 December 2005 23:48 (twenty years ago)

http://snl.jt.org/arc/epskit/88-10-15-4.jpg

― Pleasant Plains /// (Pleasant Plains ///), Saturday, 17 December 2005 00:13 (twenty years ago)

shit, read 'em both. Goldman is so odious, it's funny. He's not even totally wrong about Elvis, I think, at least from one perspective which you have to admit civilized people might share in part. One wonders at Elvis and how he got that way--there aren't any answers. Bobbie Ann Mason did a short book on EP too, and I've only read part of it, and the scathing Stanley Booth review of same.

Like I always say, PG's two EP books are sane, well-written and a little boring. What comes thru despite PG's "sane" approach is FEAR. Which hobbled Elvis from the start, and which ruined his career, and which killed him.

― edd s hurt (ddduncan), Saturday, 17 December 2005 16:51 (twenty years ago)

edd

can you tell me more about the fear bit, i havent really thot about it, and would like an expansion.

also, how can you write sanely and rationally about a person whos e ntire presence worked against those factors--elvis was batshit and caused other people to be bat shit in the mere presence of him?

i am in the middle of reading about the shakers, for the book im writing, and all of the descriptions of the shakers movements are described with a clinical/antropological energy--and the problem is that xtc evades all of that, so the strangeness adn the holy out of controllness of it all is sidestepped--and then i read a first person account, and i hear things about men getting hard and comming in the midst of these dances, in the midst of these celibacies...

there is something analogous to elvis, to the whole slide down into chaos, from the holy rolling shoebox churches in tupelo to the rolling around wiht white pantied innocents in graceland...

how can you write coldly and rationally about a mn who caused such excesses? How can you write 2 boring books about Elvis?

― anthony easton (anthony), Saturday, 17 December 2005 18:55 (twenty years ago)

steven, barry miles did an article about his friendship with goldman that appeared in one of those mojo lennon specials a few years ago. it's not online but it's pretty short so i could type it up for you if you'd like (they asked yoko ono to comment on it: she responded by comparing AG to hitler!).

hey edd, where can i read that stanley booth review? didn't he pan guralnick's books, too?

― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Saturday, 17 December 2005 19:33 (twenty years ago)

I'll try to find that Booth review, I can't seem to google it and I don't have it lying around any more.

someone like Nick Tosches would've done a good job on Elvis, right? except that Nick wasn't all that interested in the fried-banana, mama-lovin' Elvis all that much. Jerry Lee or Dean Martin was more his speed. It's important to just enter into the world of Elvis, where everything was a joke and one wishes that it wasn't that way. That's probably what I mean about "fear," Anthony--you get the feeling that Elvis is uneasy about where the joke ends and the real shit takes over.
When you're too scared to really commit yourself, yet you basically have this overwhelming belief in yourself that is constantly in danger of degenerating into a joke, that's trouble, for anyone. EP was always scared the whole thing was gonna go south tomorrow, which I take to mean that he at some deep level never quite believed in what he was doing. I'm not one of those who think EP took from others, in a pejorative sense--for all intents and purposes EP is the only true rock and roll star, he created his own thing, but never had a plan. He should have quit recording in Nashville first chance he got, too--that place will sap the will and passion of anyone, even a god like Elvis.

― edd s hurt (ddduncan), Sunday, 18 December 2005 01:15 (twenty years ago)

That Bobbie Ann Mason book is horrible.

― Matos-Webster Dictionary (M Matos), Sunday, 18 December 2005 01:32 (twenty years ago)

I found Booth's review online but it's behind a wall of registration. What's everybody's beef with it? (Not that I've read it or anything else by Mason, I'm just curious.)

― Michael Daddino (epicharmus), Sunday, 18 December 2005 01:46 (twenty years ago)

My recollection of the Mason book is that it's like if a five-year-old's guide to Elvis featured jaw-slackeningly obvious "psychological insight."

― Matos-Webster Dictionary (M Matos), Sunday, 18 December 2005 01:53 (twenty years ago)

You mean "he really loved his momma a lot" and such?

― Michael Daddino (epicharmus), Sunday, 18 December 2005 02:00 (twenty years ago)

"and it affected his art"

― Matos-Webster Dictionary (M Matos), Sunday, 18 December 2005 02:01 (twenty years ago)

Has anyone read Guralnick's book on Sam Cooke yet?

― Elvis Telecom (Chris Barrus), Sunday, 18 December 2005 02:03 (twenty years ago)

has anybody here read the guralnick sam cooke book?

― j blount (papa la bas), Sunday, 18 December 2005 02:12 (twenty years ago)

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