Several hours before a recent book signing and reading at Book Soup in West Hollywood, Guralnick is ensconced at the Chateau Marmont. “The story has been told before, but never so convincingly or with such an absence of glee or condescension,” Greil Marcus wrote in Esquire. The final part of Guralnick’s exhaustive two-volume biography, “Careless Love: The Unmaking of Elvis Presley” (Little, Brown & Co.), covering the years 1958 to 1977, was published earlier this year, and like the first volume, “Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley” (Little, Brown & Co., 1994), it has been widely praised as the definitive work on the legendary star. Peter Guralnick knows that Elvis is dead, just as he knows what time he died, who discovered the body and, seemingly, every other detail of Presley’s life and death. Yet so enduring is his legacy, so alive his rich baritone, that it’s almost hard to believe that he died 21 years ago, a bloated, pitiful addict smothered in his own vomit on the shag-carpeted bathroom floor of Graceland, the gilded prison of his own making. There’s no new work to add to the recordings, movies and videotapes of concerts originated when America was younger and more innocent, when a juvenile delinquent sneer and suggestively vibrating hips were enough to convince Eisenhower-era protectors of public morals that rock ‘n’ roll was the devil’s anthem.

As a celebrity who graduated to the status of single-name cultural icon, Elvis’ immortality was assured.

Coming soon to a 7-Eleven near you-Elvis Presley! The King lives on, in myth, in mysterious sightings, in legions of pompadoured impersonators, on postage stamps, and in songs still played on jukeboxes and radios around the world.

Elvis the king lives book