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Philosophers analyze the last of the great rock stars.
List of contents
Foreword by Luke Dick
Editorial Note
Part I: UNCERTAINTY
1. Tom Petty Needed to Know (Don Fallis)
2. Time to Move On: Optimism and Action in the Face of Uncertainty (Ashley Watkins)
Part II: MAKING ART
3. Friedrich Nietzsche and Tom Petty in the Individual¿s Aesthetic Creation of Music¿A tragedy (Chris Innes)
4. Echoes of Past and Present (Matthew Crippen)
5. ¿Free Fallin¿¿: Tom Petty, Postmodernism, Post-Structuralism and Who We Are(n¿t) (John Sewell)
Part III: GIRL TROUBLE
6. She Went Down Swingin¿: Petty¿s View of Women (Megan Volpert)
7. Mary Jane's Revenge: Tom Petty and Death (Randall E. Auxier)
8. Insider Knowledge: A Lover¿s Delusion? (Mary Edwards)
Part IV: CORPORATE MACHINE
9. When Money Shouldn¿t be King: Petty on the Value of Music and the Ethics of the Music Industry (Brian Berkey)
10. Forever the Wild One: Tom Petty and His Drive for Artistic Freedom (S. Keller Anders)
11. Century City: On Collective and Corporate Intentionality (Raul Hakli)
Part V: HOW TO REBEL
12. ¿Blue-Bellied Devils": The Ethics of Self-Defense (Eric v.d. Luft)
13. Anything That¿s Rock `n¿ Roll (Is Fine): On Authoritarianism and Permission (Megan Volpert)
Appendix: An After-death Interview with Tom Petty
About the author
Randall E. Auxier is a musician and also a professor of philosophy and communication studies at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. He is the author of several books, including
Metaphysical Graffiti (2017), and the editor or co-editor of many more, including
Bruce Springsteen and Philosophy (with Douglas R. Anderson) (2008). Megan Volpert is the author of many books on communication and popular culture, including two Lambda Literary Award finalists. After seven years as a nationally competitive debater, she competed in poetry slams for several more. Her MFA in Creative Writing is from Louisiana State University and she writes regularly for
PopMatters. She has been teaching high school English in Atlanta for over a decade and was 2014 Teacher of the Year. She edited the American Library Association-honored anthology
This Assignment Is So Gay: LGBTIQ Poets on the Art of Teaching.She is co-editor of
RuPaul's Drag Race and Philosophy (2020).
Summary
Philosophers analyze the last of the great rock stars.
