Famed music critic sounds off on pop culture

Greil Marcus is a shameless Eminem fan.

This is just one of the many facts I learned from my friends in Professor Marcus' fall '02 American Studies seminar "Popular Criticism." This visiting professor, she told me, was "supposed to be amazing," some "big guy from Rolling Stone."

He was going to teach the class how to write its own critiques of nonfiction, radio, and film. I thought wistfully to myself that this was the type of course I was supposed to be taking at Princeton - one of the mythic, enlightening dream courses I seem to miss every time the Student Course Guide is published.

When fall came, I tried to wheedle myself into the long closed, much praised seminar. But since all of the courses that interest me inevitably take place at the same time, I had to sit it out.

Still, I couldn't resist attending one class to sample what I was missing.

Greil Marcus sat at the head of the square wooden table, amid the shelves of worn, anonymous books. He wore a black suit with a white t-shirt beneath and electric blue eyeglasses with unusually small circular lenses.

The well-known critic has authored or coauthored the books Double Feature, Mystery Train, the highly acclaimed Lipstick Traces, Dead Elvis, Ranters and Crowdpleasers, The Dustbin of History, Invisible Republic, and Double Trouble, which compares Bill Clinton to Elvis Presley.

He has reviewed films for Politics magazine for a time and worked as a TV critic in the mid 70's, his favorite show being "Let's Make a Deal" and least favorite "The Waltons."

"Popular Criticism" was the second seminar he has taught at Princeton, the first being "Prophecy and the American Voice," which he has also taught at Berkley.

....Needless to say, I was delighted when I had the opportunity to interview Professor Marcus after that day, i.e. to have him all to myself for an hour.

....When a friend from his undergraduate years started a little magazine about music in 1968 and asked him to write for it, Marcus jumped at the opportunity.

...."It was a way to keep my mind alive . . . Music was interesting and wide open . . . There were no preconceptions" about how it should be perceived or discussed.

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He began to spend more time on the magazine out of an increasing desire "to express the thrill I was getting from the music." He soon became a longtime writer and later an editor of Rolling Stone magazine.

But while his biggest challenge as a critic is to formulate his own ideas and then to speak them, his greatest challenge as a teacher is to let his students sculpt their ideas independently.

"If a student uses cliché or a euphemism and assumes we all know it, but the word actually means nothing, that shows that he or she doesn't know what he or she wants to say or is afraid of saying it," he said.

"I try to help students bring out their message . . . All that they need is for someone to show interest in what it is that [they] do."

Marcus is wholly opposed to telling someone what to think. "To me, that's the definition of a cult," he said.

Marcus attempts teaching with an entirely opposing goal, to challenge students to actively decide what they think and write it the way they wish to write it.

"A straight line isn't the most interesting way to reach a destination," he advises. "All of my books start with music. Lipstick Traces starts and ends with the Sex Pistols, and there's some other stuff in between."

'Shameless and Funny'

Speaking of music, "So I heard a rumor that you're a big Eminem fan. Is this true?" I ask.

Marcus states unabashedly that it is. He describes the controversial rapper as having "tremendous vehemence. He loves words."

....When Marcus experiences music, he wants an event, an act, an enactment.

...."I'm not interested in whether it is actually real or not."

....But he concedes that Eminem's videos are less than stellar, in fact "they're awful, they're preening and cute."

....He started listening to Eminem late, he says, but enthusiastically describes the Saturday Night Live episode that featured Snoop Dog, Dr. Dray, and Eminem performing together: "It was shocking how quick they were!"

We move on to the general topic of bubble gum pop and inevitably arrive at Britney Spears. "I don't understand her at all." Marcus prefers her Pepsi commercials to her videos and says there is something "Bride-of-Frankenstein-ish" about her.

"Is she real? She's hosted "Saturday Night Live" twice . . . and she has incredible comic timing. She's shameless and funny . . . a Carol Lombard . . . Then she comes out singing, and she's this completely different person."

I ask him if he watches American Idol, and he tells me that he can't because he already watches so much TV, (24 is a current favorite) and that if he watched any more, it would totally consume his ability to do anything else.

By this point, I know Professor Marcus is going to have to fight to get me off the phone. I am intoxicated; I am soaking all of this up.

Not only is he well-spoken about undeniably cool material, but I like him. I am suddenly outraged at the common perception that critics are consummate jerks.