Woodworth Writes Bee Thousand

Marc Woodworth, English Department lecturer and associate editor of Salmagundi, has written Bee Thousand (Continuum, 2006), the story of the celebrated 1994 album by the alternative-rock group Guided By Voices. It is part of the 33 1/3 series by Continuum International Publishing Group. 

The book tells the story of Bee Thousand's long and unorthodox creation and includes interviews with band members, Guided by Voices' manager, and others. Woodworth spends a chapter on the album's lyrics by Robert Pollard and discusses the "do-it-yourself" nature of the album and the influence of its "lo-fi aesthetic."

"The book replicates the cut-and-paste, collage quality of the record itself," Woodworth says. "I wrote much of the book when I was on a Fulbright in Slovakia and I realized from that geographical and cultural remove that Bee Thousand, this example of sublime self-made art ... is distinctly American, reaching back, as it does, to Emerson's ideal of self-reliance and the 'old, weird America' that Greil Marcus writes of in his book about Dylan and the 'Basement Tapes'."

Woodworth has also written Solo: Women Singer-Songwriters in Their Own Words (Dell, 1998), and the poetry collection Arcade (Grove Press, 2002).

More at the publisher's Web Site

Bee Thousand at Amazon.com