Description: INFORMAL AND THEORETICALLY INFORMED, Reading Rock & Roll is an important investigation of the music that more than any other has defined our century. Kevin Dettmar and William Richey have gathered a wealth of erudite, original, and clever writings that perform close readings of rock music -- often with surprising results.

From a careful examination of the roles of addictions and female sexuality in the remakings of Courtney Love and Madonna, to the politics of George Clinton's uses and abuses of language, to the referencing of Elvis Costello in two recent novels and the use of 1970s rock in recent film soundtracks, these essays are as varied as the artists they consider. Arguing that from its inception rock and roll has exhibited the self-consciousness and irony characteristic of other postmodern art forms, the writings featured in Reading Rock & Roll regularly call attention to the allusiveness and intertextuality of rock and roll, whether it is Kurt Cobain undermining the Beatles, M. C. Hammer stealing from Rick James's "Super Freak", or U2's use of the legendary voice of Johnny Cash.

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