Double Trouble: Bill Clinton and Elvis Presley in a Land of No Alternatives

This book should probably rate somewhere around 3 or 4 stars. It isn't Marcus's best--that would be MYSTERY TRAIN or LIPSTICK TRACES--but anything by this fine critic is a whole lot better than the average nonfiction tripe out there (e.g., another cash cow "case" against one or both of the Clintons).Granted, the connection between Elvis and BC is no stronger than the connection between, well, me and Mahatma Gandhi, but if you hold a magnifiying glass up close enough to a watermelon and squint your eyes, you can see an image of the Virgin Mary. And a number of pieces collected under this misleading title are not concerned, even in a Marcusian "world in a leaf of grass" way, with either Elvis or Clinton. Having said this, no one understands the relationship between rock and American culture, past and present, better than Marcus. He is always wise, trenchant, and--though sometimes overly mystifying--strongly moral. As I read Marcus I always think, "This guy's on my side; he's saying what I would like to say if I could think of the right words." This applies to a lesser Marcus work (like this one) as well as the major ones (and he's about due for one sometime soon).