Elvis Studies

"All the books on this far-from-exhaustive list share one thing, and it’s not literary merit: they’re all predicated on the reasonable assumption that there is a market for any morsel of first-hand information about Elvis Presley—what he said, did, sang, ate, wore, read, thought, loved, feared, and loathed. In ElvisLit, no morsel is unworthy. To write this off to our culture’s voyeurism and obsession with celebrity is, I think, to miss the point. In death Elvis became whatever anyone wanted to see in him. Which is another way of saying he is now free to become whatever we want to see in ourselves. No wonder the river will never run dry."

Bill Morris at The Millions surveys a historiography of Elvis Presley.