Lit-Rock

Ryan Hibbett is Associate Professor of English at Northern Illinois University, USA, whose research examines the high art/pop culture relation in literature and music alike. He is the author of Philip Larkin, Popular Culture, and the English Individual (2019), and his articles have appeared in Cambridge Quarterly, Popular Music and Society, Twentieth-Century Literature, Contemporary Literature, and Journal of Popular Music Studies.

• Contributors IntroductionRyan Hibbett, Northern Illinois University, USAPart 1:Authorship and Authenticity 1. David Bowie’s Diamond Dogs, the Cut-Up, and Rock’s Unfinished RevolutionBarry J. Faulk, Florida State University, USA2. Kurt, Kathleen ‘n’ Kathy: Cut-and-Paste and the Art of Being For RealPatricia Malone, University of Aberdeen, UKPart 2: Craft and Confession 3. Joni Mitchell and the Literature of ConfessionDavid R. Shumway, Carnegie Mellon University, USA4. Pop Star vs. Harvard Professor: The “Amateur” Poetry of Taylor SwiftWeishun Lu, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA5. Personae Non Grata: Dramatic Monologue and Social Pathology in Select Randy Newman SongsJohn Kimsey, DePaul University, USAPart 3: Aesthetics, Movements, Technology 6. New Wave, European Avant-Gardes, and the Unmaking of Rock MusicChris Mustazza, University of Pennsylvania, USA7. Cycling on Acid: The Literariness of Altered Experiences in Psychedelic RockTymon Adamczewski, Kazimierz Wielki University, Bydgoszcz, PolandPart 4: Signs and Mediations 8. A Portrait of the Artist in a Pop Song: Images of James Joyce in Popular MusicKevin Farrell, Radford University, USA9. “Hand in Glove”: Punk, Post-punk, and PoetryMartin Malone, University of Aberdeen, UKPart 5: Nation and Narrative 10. Under an American Spell: U2’s The Joshua Tree in the Shadow of Flannery O’ConnorScott Calhoun, Cedarville University, USA11. Rock, Hard-Boiled: The Mekons and American Crime FictionPeter Hesseldenz, University of Kentucky, USA12. When Poetry Meets Popular Music: The Case of Polish Rock Artists in the Late Twentieth CenturyMarek Jezinski, Nicolaus Copernicus University, PolandPart 6: Identity and Discourse 13. “It’s our version of Almost Famous”: Towards a Reimagined Canon of Rock CriticismKimberly Mack, University of Toledo, USA14. Limits of the Literary: Rethinking Allusions in Pop MusicPat O’Grady, Independent Scholar, AustraliaAcknowledgmentsIndex

In the hubbub that followed Bob Dylan’s Nobel Prize it was clear that many commentators took it for granted that literature and popular music occupy quite different cultural spheres. The essayists in this collection disagree. Here Taylor Swift, Kathy Acker, Flannery O’Connor, and Joni Michell get the same respect, Bowie, Burroughs, Browning, and Bono equal billing, and Dashiell Hammett and James Joyce are no more (or less) iconic figures than the Polish singer songwriter Czeslaw Nieman or the British band The Mekons. This book challenges literary and rock academics alike and Ryan Hibbett’s crackerjack introduction should be on all their reading lists.