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[sanpaku]

I am reading this Greil Marcus book Lipstick Traces which is nominally about punk music but actually turns out to be a long explainer of Situationism. Marcus will have many pages about Guy Dubord and the Lettrist International, and then say, "as the Sex Pistols demonstrated..." in the most amazing way. I want to ask Greil Marcus (who is still

Comments

[lookfar]

I, too, have admired people who have the single-minded happiness of the true aficionado. You know, people unworried by the stream of desperate bad news coming at us at all times because they are hot on the trail of a 1939 Mickey Mouse baby plate. My brother, who is reasonably outraged at the bad tidings, nonetheless finds great comfort in his enormous saltwater fish tank, his collections of Worlds Fair memorabilia and German hedgehog figures. I suppose if I have a Thing, it's journaling. Like my brother, I've done it since childhood, and like him, I find it worthwhile apart from any benefit (monetary, world-changing) visible to anyone else. But I don't have the aficionado gene like he does.

[alsoname]

Would you recommend this book to someone who might not have a lot of patience for poetic waxings about Situationism? I feel like I've read a lot of that in my past life as a punk-rock pseudo-academic (i.e., I wrote a lot of term papers and read stuff for fun). I am curious about the claims of paving the way for your Reagans and your Trumps, as I always blamed that on the older Boomers, not the younger Boomers who created punk rock. (And I didn't learn about John "Rhyme Queen with Fascist Regime" Lydon until a couple of months ago ... Totally shocked me!)

[sanpaku]

Oh no, this book is heavily marinated in Boomer stream of consciousness for the first 60 pages or so and it almost made me want to give up on it. In fact I am wondering how much you might have read about situationism before drew on his writing, since he is a giant in music criticism and people quote him endlessly. So I wouldn't necessarily recommend the book if you already understand this stuff. I personally am very obtuse about artistic things so I found him kind of helpful, especially midway through the book where he kind of settles down and explains things like Situationism and dada more clearly

[alsoname]

I think most of what I've read about Situationism in a punk context was contemporaneous. For example, I have these huge copies of Search & Destroy, a late '70s zine from San Francisco, and they were definitely inspired by a lot of weird art movements. I remember Frank Discussion of the Feederz giving long interviews in which he expounded on the influence of Situationism, for example. They were definitely aware of their influences at the time