The Shape of Things to Come: Prophecy and the American Voice

(Paperback, Main)

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America is a nation whose sense of righteousness goes hand in hand with paranoia. Greil Marcus explores the influence of culture and politics on the American psyche - and the idealism, horror, eloquence and violence integral to its founding narratives.

Reviews

"Ranging as he does from Monica Lewinsky to David Lynch, Lou Reed back to Philip Roth, the Pixies to Pere Ubu, the great cultural critic Greil Marcus suggests in "The Shape of Things to Come" that in the USA, artists rather than politicians truly have the measure of the country."--Paul Muldoon, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of "Horse Latitudes"
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"A pirate radio station broadcasting late at night from the heart of the lost republic."--D. D. Guttenplan, "The Times Literary Supplement" (London)

"There are wonders on nearly every page, connections made and broken between history and pop culture, and always there is Marcus's gift for summoning up an entire phenomenon in a single sentence."--Ken Tucker, "Entertainment Weekly"

"Like "Lipstick Traces, " this book is an impossible fever dream- conversation, in which Abraham Lincoln, Sleater-Kinney, obscure bluesmen, old punks, characters from "24, " Sinclair Lewis, and Martin Luther King Jr. speak to each

Author Bio

Greil Marcus was born in San Francisco in 1945. He is the author of Mystery Train, Invisible Republic, Lipstick Traces and Double Trouble, and the editor of Lester Bangs's Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung. In 1998 he curated the exhibition '1948' at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City. Marcus writes a bi-weekly column for salon.com and a monthly column for Interview. He was described by John Rockwell in the New York Times as 'a writer of rare perception and a genuinely innovative thinker'. Greil Marcus lives in Berkeley, California.