Product Description

A vibrant, sympathetic portrait of the once and future king of rock ’n’ roll by the award-winning author of Shiloh and In Country

To this clear-eyed portrait of the first rock ’n’ roll superstar, Bobbie Ann Mason brings a novelist’s insight and the empathy of a fellow Southerner who, from the first time she heard his voice on the family radio, knew that Elvis was "one of us." Elvis Presley deftly braids the mythic and human aspects of his story, capturing both the charismatic, boundary-breaking singer who reveled in his celebrity and the soft-spoken, working-class Southern boy who was fatally unprepared for his success. The result is a riveting, tragic book that goes to the heart of the American dream.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1098102 in Books
• Published on: 2007-07-31
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 192 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Written by fellow Southerner Mason (In Country; Clear Springs), this abbreviated biography suffers fromthe series' length limitation but makes up for it by hitting the significant points. Mason credits Elvis with inventing rock and youth culture and "[puncturing] the balloon of 1950s serenity and conformity." She posits that the result of his stint in the army "was to erase his rock-and-roll rebel image and turn him into a mainstream all-American boy next door," and that in 1969, after almost a decade spent making bad films, "he was genuinely invigorated by making good music again." It's when Mason offers her insight into Southern culture that the biography turns superficial, like her attempt to contextualize the bloated figure of the drug-addled singer's late years by noting that "in the deep-fried South, his shape was a familiar sight, typical of his age group." On the other hand, she does intrigue, stating that Elvis "was innocently authentic, but he craved the inauthentic, as country people, who are so close-uncomfortably close-to what is starkly real, often do." Unfortunately, Mason doesn't have the room to explain because she has to get back to zooming through the rest of Elvis's life before her space is up. As such, this intro to Elvis will be useful, but is still no substitute for Peter Guralnick's definitive two-volume biography (Last Train to Memphis, Careless Love), which Mason praises in her acknowledgments along with many other sources.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Part of the soon-to-be-defunct "Penguin Lives" series.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
This isn't just another Presley bio, but one of the Penguin Lives, the series that pairs well-known authors and apt iconic subjects. Kentuckian novelist Mason (In Country [1985], Zigzagging down a Wild Trail [2001]), a regional compatriot of the King's, lends her voice to his oft-told tale. Concisely and eloquently, she chronicles Elvis' sad story: humble origins, 1954 breakthrough, adoption by "the Colonel" (manager Tom Parker), early TV appearances, army hitch, the death of his mother, marriage to Priscilla, Hollywood, 1968 "comeback," Las Vegas headliner, prescription drug abuse, meeting with Nixon, and death at 42 in 1977. There is nothing much here that Peter Guralnick in the definitive Last Train to Memphis (1994) and Careless Love (1999) and others haven't already exposed, but Mason's is a sympathetic inspection. She sees Elvis as overcome by the loss of his stillborn twin and battling the inferiority complex of the "white trash" southern outsider. Unlike the rock 'n' roll rebels whose way he paved, Elvis "rebelled against poverty, not affluence. He wanted acceptance, not alienation." Benjamin Segedin
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Customer Reviews

Short and Sweet
I sometimes assign Mason's light biography of Elvis in my southern history classes, and it is always a favorite of my students.

Those looking for serious scholarship will be disappointed in the book. But it is a fun book that my students actually enjoy reading and provides a great foundation for a serious discussion of youth culture, race, and class relations. And, of course, it also shows students, who are only familiar with the kitsch, why Elvis mattered to so many people.

Mason On Elvis: An American Tragedy
Bobbie Ann Mason is the person who should have written this book on Elvis. Born in 1942, she grew up on a dairy farm in Mayfield, Kentucky; she and Elvis then are from the same time and part of the country. It is obvious from every page of this work that Ms. Mason likes Elvis's music and understands what his contribution to America and the world was. There is no substitute, as some of us remember, to being alive when Elvis literally burst on the music scene and shook us from the Eisenhower 50's. Of course Ms. Mason, one of our best living fiction writers, says it better than I: "For me, Elvis is personal--as a Southerner and something of a neighbor. I heard Elvis from the very beginning on the Memphis radio stations. Many parents found Elvis's music dangerously evocative, his movements lewd and suggestive--but when my family saw Elvis on THE ED SULLIVAN SHOW, singing 'Ready Teddy', my father cried, 'Boy, he's good!'"

My problem with this book is the same I have with the other books in this series-- their required brevity makes any in-depth study of the character impossible. This series works best, I think, in Douglas Brinkley's book on Rosa Parks since no bio of her except one for children had ever been written so he was covering new ground rather than rehashing previous material. Ms. Mason lists her sources, saying she relied heavily on Peter Guaralnick's two books on Pressley that I have not read. I did read, however, the awful book by Albert Goldman whom I believe Ms. Mason alludes to in her introduction: "In 1980, a scurrilous biography portrayed him as a redneck with savage appetites and perverted mentality, and of no musical significance to American culture." Ms. Mason provides the ultimate insult by not giving the name of the biographer.

Ms. Mason discusses briefly Elvis's movies and his interest in books. I didn't know he read books or that Priscilla got him to burn them. Ms. Mason also says that by the end of 2000 Graceland had become the most visited private home in the U. S. When I visited his grave a few years ago-- Graceland was closed that day-- I was saddened so see that out of hundreds of "floral arrangements" there was not one real flower. I suppose as the Lorettta Lynn character says in "Cold Miner's Daughter," that the plastic ones last longer.

An insightful view of Elvis
I've read Last Train to Memphis, Careless Love and other biographies of Elvis, but this is the first one to treat him so 'humanly', explaining his background and how it affected his actions as a person. I really enjoyed it; I felt like I was reading about a real person who had strengths and weaknesses like the rest of us. It was very well-written, as the above-mentioned bios were also, but this one is a lot shorter. It gives the essence of Elvis in a very respectful manner.