Conversations with Greil Marcus

20 Questions: Greil Marcus

201 20 Questions: Greil Marcus Karen Zarker/2010 From PopMatters, October 25, 2010. Used by permission. “Few if any American cultural historians take the great deep American Breath like Greil Marcus,” writes Robert Loss in his PopMatters article, “Risk and Equilibrium: The Impact of Greil Marcus.” “It’s the breath of Whitman, of Ginsberg, of Little Richard and Dylan and Aretha Franklin—in scope and risk, at least, if not their artistry or forms.” Indeed, a skilled bridge-builder who spans the chasm between academia and pop culture, the critic who cut his teeth on Rolling Stone, Creem, and the Village Voice has another book out this month, Bob Dylan by Greil Marcus : Writings 1968–2010. We’re pleased to have him back with us, this time in the playful framework of PopMatters 20 Questions. 1. The latest book or movie that made you cry? Over Labor Day weekend at the Telluride Film Festival, I was introducing David Hoffman’s 1965 film Music Makers of the Blue Ridge, about old-time country music in the North Carolina mountains. The great folklorist and singer Bascom Lamar Lunsford, then eighty-three, was the guide for a tour of the county—the best guitar player, the best clog-dancer, the best animalsounds imitator, the best dulcimer player. I’ve seen the movie many times over the years, and after talking about it for a few minutes, instead of rushing off to another screening, I figured I’d just wait in the back and watch a few minutes. Of course I was pulled in and stayed. There are two scenes, at the very end, that are completely devastating. Lunsford has been traveling through his home ground, bringing it to life, giving a deep sense of love for the place and the people and its history, and that drapes over everything. Still, after an hour, you figure you’ve got the picture. But then his tone changes slightly; he’s going to take us to see a fid- 202 CONVERSATIONS WITH GREIL MARCUS dle player, he says, someone named Jesse Ray—“Lost John.” You get the feeling this is not going to be like anything you’ve seen before—as if he doesn’t take just anyone to see this person. Lost John turns out to be a moon-faced man who looks as if the top layer of skin has been peeled off of his face: a big grin, almost no teeth. It’s hard to tell his age—somewhere between thirty and fifty. He picks up his fiddle and begins to sing “Little Maggie”—and suddenly you’re no longer in a specific place, you’re no longer looking at local culture, at folk music—you are in the presence of the kind of great artist no culture can account for, that no tradition can guarantee. You’re swept up, swept away, dumbfounded, shocked, you can’t believe how lucky you are to be in the presence of this man, you can’t believe that this performance has to end, you’re already afraid you won’t be able to remember it in every detail, afraid that, somehow, this isn’t real. That brought me to tears—but then came the end of the movie. Lunsford stands on a hill, shot from a great distance, and begins to recite an old poem about a suitor at a garden gate, returning every day to win the affections of his beloved, and how she betrayed him, reciting the poem slowly, as if it’s a memory he has never gotten over—even if being spurned ultimately led him to his true and faithful love. By the end of that, the tears were on my face. 2. The fictional character most like you? Jason, the teenage son of the underground fugitive who goes by the name of Louise Barrot in Dana Spiotta’s 2006 novel, Eat the Document. He’s as smart as a fifteen-year-old can be, which is very smart. His intelligence is all obsession and play, and all devoted to ’60s and ’70s music—the music of his mother’s never-explained, always shadowy past. His submergence in the Beach Boys and Funkadelic is his way of trying to figure out, if only emotionally , who she is, who he is—but it’s thrilling to be brought into his quest, the love the music sparks in him on its own terms. The worry is there that this is a...