WHAT NAILS IT

The éminence grise of rock criticism turns in notes on writing and its motivations.

For Marcus, perhaps the most insightful student of the works of Bob Dylan, writing is fun and play, but more, exploration: “I write to discover what I want to say and how to say it—and the nerve to say it.” The “want to say” part unfolds in its own time, but the “how to say it” part enters into the realm of the ineffable. In this latest installment in the publisher’s Why I Write series, Marcus examines how certain words fall in a certain order from a writer’s pen: how Dylan arrived at the lyrics for “Like a Rolling Stone,” how David Lynch pieced together his odd assemblage of weird Americana for the opening sequence of Blue Velvet, how Marcus himself, former writer and editor for Rolling Stone, arrived at the title for his book on Dylan-meets-weird-Americana, Invisible Republic (“There was no thought involved at all—only that ghost Bob Dylan talked about, a trickster ghost”). The author evokes three other ghosts as sources and inspirations—the first his biological father, who died in the Pacific typhoon that inspired a critical moment in Herman Wouk’s novel The Caine Mutiny; the great and irascible film critic Pauline Kael; and the Italian Renaissance artist Titian, who prompts in Marcus the existential-angst question whether there really is a high culture and a “pop” culture and whether high culture must be religiously informed, yielding a brilliant aperçu: “There are whole worlds around us that we have never seen.” As ever, Marcus sheds allusions to do Sontag or Steiner proud, and in that respect, the last line of his piece on Kael is worth the price of admission alone.

Essential for fans of Marcus and fruitful reading for anyone reflecting on the mysteries of art.