Peter Guralnick’s ‘Last Train to Memphis’

   Many millions of words have been written about Elvis Presley. But most of the best ones have been written by Peter Guralnick.
  Guralnick wrote a two-volume biography of Presley, and I just finished reading the first volume: “Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley,” published in 1994. This book covers the rock ’n’ roll singer’s early life, ending in 1958, about midway through his stint in the Army.
  Several things make this book better than the rest. First, it is meticulously researched. The detail, based on hundreds of interviews and extensive reading, is astonishing. Once Presley  hit it big in 1955-56, his life was as public and closely chronicled as anybody’s, providing a great deal of material for Guralnick to tap into.
  Second, Guralnick’s first volume is so satisfying in part because it is written in a style that avoids the “hindsight is 20/20” analysis that pervades so many biographies. Guralnick explains his approach in an Author’s Note:
  “I had one simple aim in mind — at least it seemed simple to me at the start: to keep the story within ‘real’ time, to allow the characters to freely breathe their own air, to avoid imposing the judgment of another age, or even the alarums that hindsight inevitably lends.”
  Guralnick says he “wanted to suggest the dimensions of a world, the world in which Elvis Presley had grown up, the world which had shaped him and which he in turn he unwittingly had shaped, with all the homeliness and beauty that everyday life entails.”
  In other words, Guralnick tried to tell the true story, and attempt “to rescue Elvis Presley from the dreary bondage of myth.”
  Guralnick accomplishes this, often breathtaking effect. As I read “Last Train to Memphis,” I often became completely engrossed in the narrative, much as I do with a good novel. I desperately want to know what happens next, even though I already possessed a general knowledge of the arc of Presley’s life and career.
  Next up for me is volume two, “Careless Love: The Unmaking of Elvis Presley,” published in 1999. In the second volume, Guralnick naturally picks up the story in 1958 when Presley was stationed in Germany and follows through to his death in Memphis in 1977. In between, Guralnick delivers the piece I am most interested in: Presley’s comeback, which happened largely in Las Vegas.