Sean Wilentz And Greil Marcus, Editors
The Rose & the Briar
Death, Love and Liberty in the American Ballad
A devastatingly original work that
plunges into the emotional heart of the
American psyche.
PRAISED BY ROBBIE ROBERTSON of the Band as
"a classic—a ticket to ride," The Rose & the Briar assembles
an astonishing group of writers and artists—
Paul Muldoon, Stanley Crouch, R. Crumb, Jon
Langford of the Mekons, Sharyn McCrumb, Luc
Sante, Joyce Carol Oates, Dave Marsh, and more than
a dozen other novelists, essayists, performers, and
critics—to explore the ineffable power of the American
ballad. From "Barbara Allen" through "The
Wreck of the Old 97" to contemporary ballads by
Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen, The Rose & the Briar
is what Geoffrey O'Brien hailed in the Los Angeles Times
Book Review as "a book full of internal echoes and
provocative coincidences," featuring "historical investigation,
shamanistic trance-journey, memoir, novella
and cartoon," where "names and costumes change,
soldiers become cowboys, demon lovers become backwoods
murderers . . . the voices are unmistakably distinct
but they share a common ground."
SEAN WILENTZ is the author of The Rise of
American Democracy and other books. He
teaches history at Princeton University and is
historian-in-residence at Bob Dylan's official
Web site, bobdylan.com. GREIL MARCUS is
the author of Like a Rolling Stone: Bob Dylan at the
Crossroads, Lipstick Traces, and Mystery Train. An
Old Dominion Fellow at Princeton University
in 2002, he lives in Berkeley, California.
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