Advanced Elvis Course by CAConrad

…erotic devotionals, and an argument for – and evidence of – the eternal importance of Elvis…

ooooooo this is my kinda stuff

yes

i was about to give myself a lovely chunk of time to fucking deep dive on this miraculous joy of a book – Advanced Elvis Course by CAConrad (a 2009 text republished in 2024 by the universally-exciting Peninsula Press) – but a man was passed out in the street in front of my building so I went and tried to be a helpful Good Samaritan (TM the Bible) instead, and by the time I’d made sure he was alive, called for an ambulance and stood there waiting until an ambulance arrived, that nice chunky hour was all gone, and the free hours of my day had sparkled and popped into nothingness alas alas alas. Like Elvis himself, yes, gone before his time…

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I haven’t read any CAConrad before, though I’m pretty certain I have several unread books of theirs buried in the boxes of books I have yet to unbox since my most recent trans-Atlantic move (almost four years ago lol – I DON’T HAVE SHELVES!!!), but by god I’ve gotta find them soon.

This book was an absolute fucking joy.

It is a combination of short pieces of essay, snippets of reported dialogue/conversation, and a handful of poems. All of them about or inspired by Elvis Presley and his legacy…

Elvis, that famously hunky pop singer from the middle of the twentieth century.

Elvis, obviously, is someone who remains globally famous, but on days when one isn’t actively thinking about, listening to or watching archival footage of him, it’s easy to forget quite how and why.

Of course – like anyone who’s a little bit cheeky – I watched and thoroughly enjoyed Baz Luhrman’s Elvis¹, and I’ve listened to various live and studio recordings of Elvis’ music periodically my entire adult life… I’ve also dipped in and out of the ’68 Comeback Special² as it’s currently available for free streaming (possibly in an edited form?) in the UK on BBC iPlayer, and every Christmas I make sure to put on Elvis’ Christmas Album³ at least once, so I’m not a non-Elvis person. No way. That said, I’ve never watched any of Elvis’ own films, and I’ve never sat down and made a point of listening through to any of his studio albums bar the Christmas one. So I’m a fairweather Presleyite, perhaps.

Maybe I should change that.

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What Advanced Elvis Course offers, then, is a mixed form cacophonous miscellany of ideas and images and personalities and humanities, all wrapped up with, centred on and focused towards Elvis Presley…

It’s a book, then, filled with erotic devotionals, and functions as an argument for – and evidence of – the eternal importance of Elvis…

There are raucously funny encounters here between CAConrad and the other folks flocking to Graceland… there are erotic dreams about Elvis, there are anecdotes about erotic play with CAConrad’s married lover, who seems a bit like Elvis…

There are short essays on the work of Elvis that matters, that lingers… on the ways in which his hometown has become a walking museum, but also, too, how the entirety of America has, almost, become a country-sized mausoleum following the death of this Golden socio-cultural demigod, this mid-century Heracles, this mid-century Narcissus, this mid-century Icarus…

In Elvis’ work it is possible to see examples of great art, of purging and unrepentant talent and thought and expression, of towering lust and desire and physicality and humanity and sexuality…

Elvis was an example of beauty and a lover of it, Elvis was a cultural behemoth, but someone who wasn’t ignorant of what and which culture[s] he was a living part of…

His musical interests were often stylised as – within his personal narratives at least (though maybe not to the wider and conservative American public of his time) – exisiting within conversations with the performers and composers who came before… Elvis himself was not a self-conscious cultural coloniser, and though arguments can be made against him and his oeuvre for the way in which poorer, Black, musicians and song-writers lost out on rights and fame when their songs became Elvis hits, one never gets the impression – The ’68 Comeback Special offers great examples of this throughout – that Elvis was ever of the belief that rock ‘n’ roll and the Blues were his music. Culture is a conversation, innit.

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Elvis was a conduit, a beautiful catastrophic conduit who lived and loved and crooned and sang and rocked and fucked and existed, yes, existed.

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If you like Elvis and erotic poetry and fragmentary literature (and aren’t right wing), then Advanced Elvis Course is absolutely the kind of thing that you – like me – are probably going to love.

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CAConrad teeters on the edge of cult-formation, dives into the heart of the Elvis industrial complex, bounces back out with Elvis branded tat and Elvis branded anecdotes, returning to coastal America with analysis and poetry and wit and memory….

It’s a short book, yes, and though I could have happily read 1,000 pages of this Queer analysis-reflection-riff on the importance and power of Elvis, the text as it stands is perfectly formed. Tight, concise, perfect, beautiful.

I laughed, I loved, I was moved.

Elvis as secular saint, Elvis as pagan god, Elvis as something all of his own and all perfect. It’s a joy.

Highly highly fucking recommended.

Order Advanced Elvis Course direct from Peninsula Press via this link

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1. Except for its career nadir performance by Tom Hanks (until typing this I’d forgotten he was even in it, which is the best way to remember that film, I think…) ↩︎
2. This feels somehow impossible, but the director of this is still alive. In his 90s, but still alive! ↩︎
3. Hymns have never sounded so horny. ↩︎