BOOK REVIEW OF "THE GRATEFUL DEAD" The Texas Tech community has made this publication openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters to us. Citation Weiner, R.G. (1997). [Review of the book The Grateful Dead by Goldberg, Christine]. Journal of Popular Culture, 31(1), 215-217. Citable Link http://hdl.handle.net/2346/1542 Terms of Use CC-BY Title page template design credit to Harvard DASH. Book Reviews . 215 lack sufficient empirical corroboration; however, the essay format of his expose offers him more freedom in this regard. Maase also has a ten­ dency to argue in a quasi-teleological way, suggesting that all develop­ ments within European popular culture were ultimately targeted at the basic cultural shift that he recognizes. This reader would have welcomed a more elaborate annotation, although this is partially compensated by the selected bibliography at the end. Also disappointing is the lack of an index in a work with such scholarly pretensions. Nevertheless, the book makes a valuable contribution to our understanding of European popular culture. The publisher should seriously consider an English translation, in order to reach a much broader, international audience. Tilburg University, The Netherlands Mel van Elteren Chelsea House Publisher's newest addition to their Pop Culture Legends Series (which includes books on Marilyn Monroe, Madonna, Stephen King, and Bruce Springsteen, among others) is a short history of the leg­ endary Grateful Dead (GO). These books, designed for young adult readers and the general public, provide a unique perspective on popular culture icons. Scholars of Popular Culture can study and analyze books like these in order to have a greater understanding of how such figures fit into the popular milieu and mindset of our culture. The Grateful Dead traces the group's beginnings in San Francisco in the mid-sixties through the death of Jerry Garcia in 1995 and the subsequent breakup of the band. Piccoli, a journalist for the Washingtoll Times, begins the story of the GO with Jerry Garcia's childhood and the traumatic events which even­ tually shaped his world view and his interest in art, philosophy, litera­ ture, and music. A teenage Garcia read works by Kant, Heidegger, and Schopenhauer, and when Garcia first heard artists like Chuck Berry and Gene Vincent in the late fifties, he knew he wanted to play music. Piccoli also describes how Garcia's interest in bluegrass music during the early sixties led to the formation of the Warlocks-which ultimately became the GO. (Mention of the fateful meeting between Garcia and his friend and thirty-year songwriting partner, Robert Hunter, during the early sixties is strangely absent.) From the band's beginnings as the Warlocks, they experimented with improvisation and free form song structures which became their trade­ mark throughout their thirty years. The band's sound appealed to those "weary of the same pop" (30). The author also looks at how the GO fit into the San Francisco music scene and the drug culture during the later sixties. Piccoli describes how early Warlocks/Grateful Dead perfor­ mances provided the soundtrack for Ken Kesey 's infamous Acid Tests 216 . Journal of Popular Culture (an experiment with drugs, music, and media which Kesey and bis band of Merry Pranksters staged in the mid-sixties). Piccoli explains how all these activities fit historically into the overall scheme of the sixties and mentions other key players in the drug culture: Timothy Leary, Allen Ginsberg, and Augustus Stanley Owsley. There are chapters discussing the GO's role in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district and the ill­ fated performances at the Monterey Pop Festival (1967) and Woodstock (1969). The author also explains, why, four months after Woodstock, the Oead did not play at the Altamont Speedway concert where, during the Rolling Stones performance, a spectator was stabbed. Piccoli describes the GO's recording career in minor detail, spending most of the text discussing the early albums. He does discuss the later albums briefly. Piccoli only casually mentions the GO's own business venture (in the early seventies the band started their own record com­ pany), and their historic 1978 concerts at the Pyramids of Egypt. He does, however, point out throughout most of the eight chapters how the band's fan base, the "Deadheads," remained a constant factor in the band's life and history for thirty years. The band's popularity as the world's most popular touring attraction showed no signs of slowing down after thirty years. During the last few years of the band's existence, demand for tickets outweighed availability, causing severe problems on their last couple of tours. Piccoli spends most of the book on the first seven years of the band's existence and this is the strongest section. While he mentions the cultural phenomenon of the Deadheads, he does not really analyze its signifi­ cance in the larger picture, which should have been explained in more detail. There are a few minor historical errors concerning release and performance dates. Although Piccoli does eventually mention lyricist Robert Hunter, the band's other major songwriterllyricist John Perry Barlow is absent. It appears that Piccoli is really an outsider to the scene surrounding the Grateful Dead, having attended only one GD concert. The Grateful Dead's greatest strength lies in the author's prose abili­ ties. The writing is lively and informative and weaves the band's tale in a very non-judgmental and objective way. Despite its shortage of detail, The Grateful Dead is an interesting read and can be finished in one sit­ ting. For the well-versed fan, there is notbing new here, but the novice interested in a short, cursory understanding of the GD's history needs to look no further. An official, and comprehensive history still remains to be written. The Grateful Dead is profusely illustrated and new artwork by famed rock artist Stanley Mouse adorns the cover. (The preface con­ tains a brief history of Stanley Mouse who has done art work for the GO since their beginnings. "As a visual historian of rock music, Mouse has Book Reviews . 217 truly earned a place among pop culture legends" [9] .) Entertainment Tonight co-host Lezza Gibbons wrote the foreword stating that, by studying different pop culture icons, we "ultimately leam more about ourselves" (6-7). Piccoli provides a brief discography, chronology, and index. The Grateful Dead will make a welcome addition to any public library and those academic libraries with special collections on popular music and American popular culture. Mahon Library, Lubbock Texas Robert G. Weiner Aesthetic Ideology. Edited by Paul de Man. Intro by Andrzej Warminski. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996. This book collects essays from the last years of de Man's life (1977- 83) concerning the "critical linguistic analysis" of the possibility of an "aesthetic ideology" (Warminski I). The essays include analyses of the work of Locke, Pascal, Kant, Hegel, Schlegel, and others related to the theory of language-in particular to the ragged border between literary theory and philosophy. Additionally, de Man talks of "the possibility of juxtaposing ideology and critical philosophy, which is the persistent burden of contemporary thought" (70). He concludes that neither twain shall meet, but readers who enjoy twisting their minds in the yogic con­ tortions of contemporary critical postures will appreciate de Man's ener­ getic proof, and those who don't may yet be comforted by having an obviously very bright guy tell them so. De Man's starting point is that the figurative power of language which is at the root of the aesthetic communication "renders it nebulous and obfuscating"(35). "Even in the transcendental realm of revealed lan­ guage in Holy Writ, the necessary choice between seduction and truth remains undecidable"(69). His conclusion is that "the relationsh ip and the distinction between literature and philosophy cannot be made in terms of a distinction between aesthetic and epistemological cate­ gories .... Contrary to common belief, literature is not the place where the unstable epistemology of metaphor is suspended by aesthetic plea­ sure, although this attempt is a constitutive moment of its system. It is rather the place where the possible convergence of rigor and pleasure is shown to be a delusion"(50). De Man finds it "equally vain to deplore or to praise" this "disjunction between philosophy and history, ... between literature and aesthetics, ... between literary experience and literary theory"(104), although it gives philosophers plenty to scoff at in literary theorists. As near as I can make out, literary theory is a margarita, aes­ thetic experience being the tequila and literary theory the lime, however much we might wish it to be a martini, with gin the aesthetic component and literary theory the vermouth. The ingredients that comprise a fulfill-.