Lit-Rock: Literary Capital in Popular Music

Description

Just as soon as it had got rolling, rock music had a problem: it wanted to be art. A mere four years separate the Beatles as mere kiddy culture from the artful geniuses of Sergeant Pepper's, meaning the very same band who represents the mass-consumed, "mindless" music of adolescents simultaneously enjoys status as among the best that Western culture has to offer. The story of rock music, it turns out, is less that of a contagious popular form situated in opposition to high art, but, rather, a story of high and low in dialogue--messy and contentious, to be sure, but also mutually obligated to account for, if not appropriate, one another. The chapters in this book track the uses of literature, specifically, within this relation, helping to showcase collectively its fundamental role in the emergence of the "pop omnivore." Dedication Contents Introduction: Conspicuous Listening: Literature, Rock, and the Pop Omnivore Part I: Authorship and Authenticity 1 David Bowie’s Diamond Dogs, the Cut-Up, and Rock’s Unfinished Revolution • Barry J. Faulk 2 Kurt, Kathleen ‘n’ Kathy: Cut-and-Paste and the Art of Being for Real • Patricia Malone Part II: Craft and Confession 3 Joni Mitchell and the Literature of Confession • David R. Shumway 4 Pop Star vs. Harvard Professor: The “Amateur” Poetry of Taylor Swift • Weishun Lu 5 Personae Non Grata: Dramatic Monologue and Social Pathology in Select Randy Newman Songs • John Kimsey Part III: Aesthetics, Movements, Technology 6 New Wave, European Avant-Gardes, and the Unmaking of Rock Music • Chris Mustazza 7 Cycling on Acid: The Literariness of Altered Experiences in Psychedelic Rock • Tymon Adamczewski Part IV: Signs and Mediations 8 A Portrait of the Artist in a Pop Song: Images of James Joyce in Popular Music • Kevin Farrell 9 “Hand in Glove”: Punk, Post-punk, and Poetry • Martin Malone Part V: Nation and Narrative 10 Under an American Spell: U2’s The Joshua Tree in the Shadow of Flannery O’Connor • Scott Calhoun 11 Rock, Hard-Boiled: The Mekons and American Crime Fiction • Peter Hesseldenz 12 When Poetry Meets Popular Music: The Case of Polish Rock Artists int he Late Twentieth Century • Marek Jeziński Part VI: Identity and Discourse 13 “It’s Our Version of Almost Famous”: Toward a Reimagined Canon of Rock Criticism • Kimberly Mack 14 Limits of the Literary: Rethinking Allusions in Pop Music • Pat O’Grady Acknowledgments List of Contributors Index