“Dead Elvis: A Chronicle of a Cultural Obsession,” Greil Marcus
This, on the other hand, is not about Elvis death at all, but his afterlife — that is, the fixation that the world still has with him, inspired by the many “sightings” of Presley in the years following his death. Irreverant and often hilarious, this series of essays (by one of rock’s most venerated critics) works from the premise that he’s worth more dead to us than alive, that Elvis represents “the necessity existing in every culture to produce a perfect, all-inclusive metaphor for itself.”