Dismantles the Woody Guthrie we have been taught--the rough-and-ready rambling' man--to reveal an artist who discovered how intimacy is crucial for political struggle
Woody Guthrie is often mythologized as the classic American "rambling' man," a real-life Steinbeckian folk hero who fought for working-class interests and inspired Bob Dylan. Biographers and fans frame him as a foe of fascism and focus on his politically charged folk songs. What's left unexamined is how the bulk of Guthrie's work--most of which is unpublished or little known--delves into the importance of intimacy in his personal and political life. Featuring an insert with personal photos of Guthrie's family and previously unknown paintings, Woody Guthrie: An Intimate Life is a fresh and contemporary analysis of the overlapping influences of sexuality, politics, and disability on the art and mind of an American folk icon.
Part biography, part cultural history of the Left, Woody Guthrie offers a stunning revelation about America's quintessential folk legend, who serves as a guiding light for leftist movements today. In his close relationship with dancer Marjorie Mazia, Guthrie discovered a restorative way of thinking about the body, which provided a salve for the trauma of his childhood and the slowly debilitating effects of Huntington's disease. Rejecting bodily shame and embracing the power of sexuality, he came to believe that intimacy was the linchpin for political struggle. By closely connecting to others, society could combat the customary emotional states of capitalist cultures: loneliness and isolation. Using intimacy as one's weapon, Guthrie believed we could fight fascism's seductive call.
About the Author
Gustavus Stadler is an Associate Professor of English at Haverford and has written for SF Weekly and the Bay Guardian. A well-established scholar of 19th- and 20th-century U.S. culture and popular music, he is author of Troubling Minds and co-editor of the Journal of Popular Music Studies. His work on Woody Guthrie received the support of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities for 2015-16; he was awarded the BMI Woody Guthrie Fellowship that same year.
Industry Reviews
"A revealing and reorienting new portrait."
Booklist
"Woody Guthrie: An Intimate Life adds powerfully to our understanding of a man who never shied from blending the personal with the political."
The Progressive Magazine
"With revelatory scholarship and a critic's skeptical touch . . . Stadler retraces Guthrie's footsteps, most strikingly when Guthrie left few if any traces himself."
Greil Marcus, author of The History of Rock 'n' Roll in Ten Songs
"Gustavus Stadler helps Woody Guthrie down from his pedestal as dust bowl icon and helps us to see him as the three-dimensional character he really was."
Billy Bragg, musician and activist
"A landmark work . . . complicates a story most music fans thought they knew. It will change the way you think not just about Guthrie but about folk music and its political legacies."
Ann Powers, author of Good Booty: Love and Sex, Black and White, Body and Soul in American Music
"Like Walt Whitman before him, Stadler's Guthrie sees no artificial boundary between the needs and urges of the human body and those of the body politic: both can be so robust, and both can be so vulnerableultimately, like Guthrie himself. Stadler captures it all."
Will Kaufman, author of Woody Guthrie: American Radical
