![]() ![]() Thus Gil Wolman, Michèle Bernstein, and Alexander Trocchi, veterans of the revolutionary/philosophical Lettrist and Situationist groups of the ’50s and ’60s, make their appearances, tell their stories, to complement narratives about popular songs and about the heretics of the German Reformation. He trekked to Europe, to Zurich, Paris, and London, for research and interviews. In his explication of text and context, he voluntarily narrows his horizon to the partisanship of the fan. ![]() Marcus has his story to tell because he was so moved by a Sex Pistols number that he had to explain to himself everything concealed in the song. Marcus’ approach to such European dissident groups as the Anabaptists and the Sex Pistols is lovingly analytic, but the book’s overall impression is of a romantic image formed at a distance-rather as European film critics writing about Hollywood, reversing the direction of Marcus’ gaze, romanticized the trends and subtrends of auteurship in the cinema of the ’50s and ’60s. The book sometimes reads inspirationally-as an American mirror image of the European enthusiasm for and, often, overvaluation of dissidence in the United States, especially that of the tight-lipped, insane variety. GREIL MARCUS’ LIPSTICK TRACES is a story of radical European dissent, and a story of the possibilities of negation as a cultural force. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989, 496 pp., illustrated, $29.95. ![]() Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the Twentieth Century, by Greil Marcus. ![]()
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