2 thoughts on ““…the best book ever written about being alive” (Dwight Garner on ‘Mystery Train’)”
Excellent piece. I identify with almost every word (just not the mention of a vuvuzela … if there’s music in hell, said Oscar Wilde, it’ll be vuvuzela … vuvuzelum?). Actually it was bagpipes.
I’m gonna paint a target on myself here by saying this claim strikes me as fairly ludicrous. My own favorite GM book is Lipstick Traces, and I might go so far as to call it my favorite ever non-fiction book. I might even call it “the best book ever about feeling outside your culture and being pissed off about it.” But “best book about being alive”? That’s a pretty large category and I’m not sure why Mystery Train needs to hold its own against Leaves of Grass, or The Mediations of Marcus Aurelius, or The Iliad. Just sayin.’
GreilMarcus.net 
Excellent piece. I identify with almost every word (just not the mention of a vuvuzela … if there’s music in hell, said Oscar Wilde, it’ll be vuvuzela … vuvuzelum?). Actually it was bagpipes.
I’m gonna paint a target on myself here by saying this claim strikes me as fairly ludicrous. My own favorite GM book is Lipstick Traces, and I might go so far as to call it my favorite ever non-fiction book. I might even call it “the best book ever about feeling outside your culture and being pissed off about it.” But “best book about being alive”? That’s a pretty large category and I’m not sure why Mystery Train needs to hold its own against Leaves of Grass, or The Mediations of Marcus Aurelius, or The Iliad. Just sayin.’