![]() Like an insect trapped in amber, it is a time capsule offering insight into a young artist whose influence would be massive. The album also includes a clutch of home recordings from 1963/64. A “poor man’s copyright,” the sealed and notarized package was unopened. The small reel-to-reel tape was found near his desk at Reed’s Sister Ray Enterprises office after his death in 2013. ![]() On Tuesday May 11, 1965, Reed had mailed the recordings to himself to prove authorship. Ultimately, his New York demimonde can be seen as an analog to William Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County. Reed had long expressed his desire for his songs to be taken as seriously as literature and film. Today, this sense of genuineness is referred to as “living my best life.” In 1965 it was a more than a challenge. Yet it also is a clear roadmap to the landscape Reed, beginning with the Velvet Underground, would populate with people who were brave enough to live their lives apart from the mainstream. The way Reed depicts himself and his experiences in the letter may simply be a young adult looking to impress. The moral and psychological growth ( bildungsroman) of Reed as a songwriter and the characters that wound populate his songs-some of the most compelling and multi-dimensional to fall under the umbrella of rock and roll-is reason enough for Marcus to drop that 25-cent word. In the liner notes for Lou Reed’s archival album, Words & Music, May 1965, Marcus uses the term bildungsroman in reference to a letter Reed sent to his mentor, the poet Delmore Schwartz, in 1965. ![]() The critic Greil Marcus has never been shy about sending readers (like me) scurrying for the dictionary. ![]()
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