![]() It is necessary to utterly destroy the individual’s claim on our attention by leading the reader to feel in every way superior to him to sever the individual from the social context that might make sense of his work or allow the reader to feel kinship with him to bury what might remain of that social context in bigotry and stereotyping to selectively omit important parts of the story being told, and to falsify others and to surround the enterprise as a whole with calumnies and lies. For such a task, revelations about the moral weakness and ill-spent life of a single individual are useful, but no matter how numerous or squalid such revelations might be, they are not sufficient. It is Goldman’s purpose to entirely discredit Elvis Presley, the culture that produced him, and the culture he helped create-to altogether dismiss and condemn, in other words, not just Elvis Presley, but the white working-class South from which he came, and the pop world which emerged in his wake. The moment you can do just what you like, there is nothing you care about doing.” The real significance of Goldman’s Elvis is in its attempt at cultural genocide. Lawrence’s dictum on what he took to be the American idea of freedom: “Men are not free when they are doing just what they like. ![]() It was a fantasy of freedom with the reality of slavery, the ultimate validation of D. ![]() An exile from the real world, Elvis Presley built his own world, and within it-where the promise was that every fear, pain, doubt, and wish could be washed away with money, sex, drugs, and the bought approval of yes-men-Elvis Presley rotted. But the significance of Goldman’s book is not to be found in its collection of scandals-Lamar Fike’s memories, rumors, composite scenes, old stories fleshed out or simply repeated. There is first of all dope, Herculean quantities of it then sex, orgies, and homemade pornographic videos piled upon fetishes, phobias, and neurotic dysfunction then violence, a much thinner theme, but including accounts of cruelty, gunfever, and gunplay then fat, then waste-all of it testimony to a schizophrenia as out of control as it was cossetted. The promised scandal is there in plenty, and because of the saintliness in which Elvis was wrapped throughout his lifetime, it still has punch. Despite some partially negative or carping notices, the reviewing media have accepted the book as it presents itself-as the last book we will need about Elvis Presley. Because of the money involved, and because of Goldman’s reputation as a New York intellectual, the book has been reviewed widely and prominently as no book on Elvis Presley before it, it has been taken seriously. paperback sale, a movie option, high-priced excerpts in Rolling Stone and Ladies Home Journal, newspaper syndication through the New York Times service. Before publication, Goldman’s Elvis generated well over $2 million in subsidiary rights: a $1 million U.S. ![]() The word went out that Fike had the goods, and Goldman was to give the goods some substance-to turn what might have been just another scandal book into “the definitive biography.” Serious money was put behind the project, and it paid off. ![]() Agent Kevin Eggers brought Fike together with Albert Goldman, a fifty-four-year-old pop critic and former college professor. When Lamar Fike, for many years a member of the Memphis Mafia, Elvis Presley’s stable of paid friends and gofers, decided to sell his story, he spawned a small industry. ![]()
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