The Rose & the Briar: Death, Love and Liberty in the American Ballad - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0393059545 ISBN 13: 9780393059540

Publisher: W W Norton & Co Inc, 2005

Synopsis

A collection of writings and illustrations on the American ballad considers it as an art form as well as an expressive reflection of history, in an anthology that features pieces by such contributors as Paul Muldoon, John Rockwell, and Joyce Carol Oates. 15,000 first printing.

About this title

About the Author:

Sean Wilentz is the author of the forthcoming The Rise of American Democracy. A professor of history at Princeton University, he is historian-in-residence at Bob Dylan's official Web site. Greil Marcus is the author of Lipstick Traces and Mystery Train, among other works. An Old Dominion Fellow at Princeton in 2002, he lives in Berkeley, California.

From Booklist:

*Starred Review* Defining ballad loosely as a song with narrative content or reference, coeditors Wilentz and Marcus, a historian and a rock critic, respectively, asked 22 nonacademic writers to each pick an American ballad and expatiate on it. Their responses are wonderfully varied, from John Rockwell on the performance style of Burl Ives' recording of "The Foggy, Foggy Dew" to poet Paul Muldoon's brand-new variant, "Blackwatertown," of "The Unfortunate Rake" and its cognate, "The Streets of Laredo"; from Anna Domino's historical research on the real murder behind "Omie Wise" to Ed Ward's knockout new-journalism-style excavation of an obscure 1960s soul song. Novelists Sharon McCrumb and Joyce Carol Oates respond with fiction, artists R. Crumb and Jon Langford with cartoons. Paul Berman's "Mariachi Reverie," inspired by Vicente Fernandez's "Volver, Volver," which opens up a new world of Mexican pop music for most Anglo readers, is as good, and rants by Rennie Sparks (intemperate, p.c.) and Pere Ubu's David Thomas (over-the-top, incoherent) are as bad as the collection gets. The accompanying CD of 20 of the chosen songs often suggests that a good writer is hung up on trash (there are better Bob Dylan ballads than Wendy Lesser's choice).Generally, the newer the song, the paltrier it is. But even the least of the essays makes good, if irritating, reading. The best are terrific. Ray Olson
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About this edition

• Publisher: W W Norton & Co Inc
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0393059545
• ISBN 13: 9780393059540
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 406
• Editor: Wilentz Sean, Marcus Greil