I do know that Greil Marcus in Lipstick Traces is a wilder and more creative writer than Reynolds, but an impression lingers of his nonetheless being way too much of a celebrant of a “battles for cultural symbols” leftoid narrative. He’s got solid info on many artists, makes brilliant connections, but he’s one of those guys that prevent us from seeing Rock and rock n’ roll for what they really were. Presley = The Sex Pistols seems the basic spirit.

Someone like Reynolds, for all his faults, gives you a better sense of how pop music functions for us now.

And as I think you know, the 60s matter big-time for all of us now, just as the Founding does. A second Founding, in some ways. You can’t let the tiresomeness of a certain kind of liberal-boomer triumphalism obscure that fact.

But surely this is another case of everything being the fault of the Boomers isn’t it? The post-Boomers have all come of age being deluged with the notion that the Sixties (i.e., the past) were the greatest moment in the history of the universe, which I believe is a complete inversion of how all prior American generations were raised. So of course “futurism” isn’t the way that things are going to go, culturally speaking.

The differences between the bleak, inward-focused vision of the future presented by William Gibson (somewhat oddly mentioned above) for Gen X, and the hopeful, outward-looking vision of Star Trek that influenced Boomers, are instructive, I think.

P.S. For enjoyability and readability, how does Reynolds’ work compare to something like Lipstick Traces, a wonderful book full of just the right combination of erudite learning, entertaining anecdotes, and lunatic straw-grasping for greater meaning?