I'm a man. Well, maybe so, but were you also aware that you're the progeny of ancient Greek concepts of music, myth and hero, even as you strut around your bedroom in your y-fronts, snarling into your hairbrush, pretending to be Iggy Pop?

Rock taps into the all-important idea of the "authentic" and into our Western grammar of hoping and dreaming. But what exactly of what, asks Ruth Padel in her breathless, yet virile exploration, is the patently artificial rock sensibility authentic? Under pressure to be "men", she argues, boys and young men seek refuge and transformation by dissolution into the realm of rock--a place where they can celebrate their heroism, howl their need, and rage against the machine. How did these swaggering displays become so damn sexy? Along the way, Padel investigates rock's imprint on relationships between masculinity and femininity and blackness and whiteness. She wisely avoids scoring points by comparing Greek myths with the rock & roll lifestyle (her argument is at its weakest when she dips into lazy comparisons between Brian Jones and Narcissus because both died face down in a pool), to concentrate on their effect, what Raymond Williams would call a "structure of feeling" or culturally shared repertoire.

Her whistle-stop tour takes us across the US in search of rock history and the rise of the teenager borne upon the holy electric guitar and its howl of male sexual need. Padel thankfully ranges not only across the anecdotal landscape of rock & roll legend, but also dives into the music itself, its lyrics, reception, quality of feeling and intensity, which musicological jargon often fails to make accessible for the very people who really get it. A welcome cultural analysis that serves nicely as a slice of literary rock & roll product itself, read I'm a Man along with work by Nick Hornby, Greil Marcus, Simon Reynolds, and Jon Savage. And keep some Led Zep, Stones, Prodigy and Billie Holiday handy for less than easy listening--or just in case you feel the need to get heroic.--Fiona Buckland

露芙．帕黛（Ruth Padel）

是英國得獎女詩人（T.S. Eliot Prize、National Poetry Competition），也是「英國皇家文學會」、「倫敦動物學會」、「英國皇家地理學會」會士，目前擔任「英詩學會」主席。她是達爾文的玄外孫。出版過六本詩集。牛津大學希臘文學博士，曾在牛津大學、劍橋大學教授希臘文與古典文學，目前為自由撰述，替《金融時報》、《紐約時報》、《獨立報》，以及首屈一指的音樂雜誌《Mojo》撰稿。

作品有詩集Alibi、Summer Snow、Angel、Fusewire、Rembrandt Would Have Loved You、Voodoo Shop、The Soho Leopard。非文學作品有In and Out of the Mind、Whom Gods Destroy、《搖滾神話學》（I’m a Man: Sex, Gods, and Rock ‘n’ Roll）、52 Ways of Looking at a Poem、 Tigers in Red Weather。

譯者簡介

何穎怡

政治大學新聞研究所碩士，美國威斯康辛大學比較婦女學研究。曾任職聯合報系記者編輯與編譯、水晶唱片創意總監、台北之音與愛樂廣播電台主持人，目前是商周出版選書顧問，並專職翻譯。翻譯作品有《嘻哈美國》、《嘻哈黑話字典》、《乳房的歷史》、《太太的歷史》、《在美國》、《天真的人類學家》、《西蒙波娃美國紀行》、《安妮強的烈焰青春》、《冬日將盡》等。