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He didn't write music or lyrics and wasn't too articulate on the subject of himself, but when he created his dream house Elvis Presley spoke volumes about who he was. From the musical notes that dance across the gates to the soaring columns of the neo-Southern manse, from the glittering stairwells to the jungle rec room to the plush-lined bathroom suite where he died, the colors and textures and shapes of Graceland speak eloquently for the boy from Tupelo who became the King of Rock 'n' Roll. What the mansion says of Elvis, and what it says to--and of--the millions of fans who make the journey there each year, is what Graceland: Going Home with Elvis is about. What made Elvis a visual icon was his concern for style. Karal Ann Marling, one of our most astute observers of American culture, interprets the places and the look of Elvis's life--from shotgun shack to mansion, through byways lined with luxury hotels, Hollywood studios, old churches, housing projects, motels, and malls--as a dialogue he conducted with himself, his family, and his fans.

This conversation is what tourism is about, and so Graceland speaks of tourism as well--of the author's forays into an alien South, its rhythms, its history, and of Elvis as the ultimate tourist, the musician on the road, ever in transit between home and the one-night stand. Reconstructing the changing interior of Graceland during its owner's lifetime, the book describes the cultural geography of Elvisness--his self-created material world--and of American mobility in the postwar era. The history of Graceland is not in the end alien. It is our history and in Marling's book we have a portrait of our materialist ideals of "home," created in the commercial decadence of post-World War II America and fed by the fire of rock 'n' roll. In Marling's literary recapitulation of Elvis and his architectural imaginings, readers will find themselves coming home to a lost dream of America.

Karal Ann Marling is Professor of Art History and American Studies at the University of Minnesota. Her many books include George Washington Slept Here, Iwo Jima, and As Seen on TV, all published by Harvard.

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Copyright © 1996 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College
All rights reserved
Photo of Elvis Presley on the jacket: Michael Ochs Archives/Venice, CA
Illustrations: Karal Ann Marling

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