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Scott Timberg on Creative Destruction

Greil Marcus and Five Centuries of the U.S. of A.

October 5, 2009 by Scott Timberg


WHAT do thomas jefferson, linda lovelace, and pentecostalism all have in common? oh, probably a lot of things. but at the very least, they’re all part of a huge new book called “a new literary history of america,” which has just dropped on harvard university press. no anthology is perfect, but this one is full of fascinating stuff.

HERE is my new LATimes piece.
part of what makes the volume interesting is that one of the editors is both a west coaster, a rock critic, and a man conspicuously without a Ph. D., greil marcus. the book is full of left coast subjects and contributors. the mystery train author, who has had family in the bay area since he 1880s, explained to me that he doesnt see california as a strange of exotic part of america: beach boys songs like “in my room” not only reflected american reality but helped create it.
(the other editor is multiculturalism scholar and harvard professor werner sollors, who first experienced american culture through the US occupation of germany.)
i asked marcus who would read it: he said he didnt know, but was wishing he could leave it on street corners and watch who picked it up — and what they felt moved to cheer or argue about.

Filed Under: beach boys, books, greil marcus, werner sollors, west coast

Scott Timberg

I'm a longtime culture writer and editor based in Los Angeles; my book "CULTURE CRASH: The Killing of the Creative Class" came out in 2015. My stories have appeared in The New York Times, Salon and Los Angeles magazine, and I was an LA Times staff writer for six years. I'm also an enthusiastic if middling jazz and indie-rock guitarist. (Photo by Sara Scribner) Read More…

Culture Crash, the Book

My book came out in 2015, and won the National Arts & Entertainment Journalism Award. The New Yorker called it "a quietly radical rethinking of the very nature of art in modern life"

I urge you to buy it at your favorite independent bookstore or order it from Portland's Powell's.

Culture Crash

Here is some information on my book, which Yale University Press published in 2015. (Buy it from Powell's, here.) Some advance praise: With coolness and equanimity, Scott Timberg tells what in less-skilled hands could have been an overwrought horror story: the end of culture as we have known … [Read More...]

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