Quick Update on Badge

I'm in the process of putting Badge into book form. When I thought of getting a traditional publisher for the novel, this is the part I most looked forward to handing off to them.

Still, it's going well enough, and I hope to send Badge to the printer on Monday 10/14, two weeks from today. I'll be glad when it's done and I can start focusing on some of the promotional aspects of its launch, which at this moment is slated for 2/18/14. People who donated to Badge's Kickstarter campaign will get their copies in January.

Okay, back to it.

Yours in laying down the law,

Art

Check out the Trailer for Stuck Outside of Phoenix the Movie, which premiered in May 2013.

Or try Stuck Outside of Phoenix in print form for just $10.

Or try Stuck for your Kindle for just $2.99.

Put your Lobotomy Cap on Before Reading This One

I could write an essay showing the myriad atrocities in this Daily Beast article, but I won't have time. I will say it's entirely possible The Daily Beast does not have your best interests at heart.

Yours in laying down the law,

Art

Check out the Trailer for Stuck Outside of Phoenix the Movie, which premiered in May 2013.

Or try Stuck Outside of Phoenix in print form for just $10.

Or try Stuck for your Kindle for just $2.99.

My Latest at the Weeklings

Never afraid to grapple with the hard questions of our day, this week at The Weeklings I take on your reluctance to give in to the corporate rock of your youth. Come on people, it's only rock and roll (and you love it). 

Yours in laying down the law,

Art

Check out the Trailer for Stuck Outside of Phoenix the Movie, which premiered in May 2013.

Or try Stuck Outside of Phoenix in print form for just $10.

Or try Stuck for your Kindle for just $2.99.

Top Twenty Rock Novels of All Time: Complete List

Top 20 Rock Novels of All Time

20 Ten Thousand Saints By Eleanor Henderson


19 Never Mind Nirvana by Mark Lindquist


18 Twisted Kicks by Tom Carson


17 Boarded Windows by Dylan Hicks


16 The Cost of Living by Rob Roberge


15 The Last Rock Star Book, Or: Liz Phair, a Rant by Camden Joy

  
14 You Don’t Love Me Yet by Jonathan Lethem


13 A & R by Bill Flanagan


12 Saguaro: The Life & Adventures of Bobby Allen Bird by Carson Mell


11 Wise Young Fool by Sean Beaudoin


10 A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan


9 Great Jones Street by Don DeLillo


8 How the Mistakes Were Made by Tyler McMahon


7 The Blue Bourbon Orchestra by Carson Mell


6 The Wishbones by Tom Perrotta


5 Never Mind the Pollacks by Neal Pollack


4 Stone Arabia by Dana Spiotta


3 High Fidelity by Nick Hornby 


2 The Commitments by Roddy Doyle


1 Banned for Life by D. R. Haney

Start at the beginning here.

Yours in laying down the law,

Art

Check out the Trailer for Stuck Outside of Phoenix the Movie, which premiered in May 2013.

Or try Stuck Outside of Phoenix in print form for just $10.

Or try Stuck for your Kindle for just $2.99.

Top Twenty Rock Novels of All Time : #1

What's this? Start at the beginning here.


1

Banned for Life by D. R. Haney

I first came across Banned for Life in 2010 after having a piece published at The Nervous Breakdown and becoming involved in its literary community. One of the most colorful writer/commenters at TNB was D. R. “Duke” Haney. Haney’s debut novel, I read in his bio, was called Banned for Life, which upon further review had serious rock lit overtones, putting it right up my alley. But the thing was $21, well more than what I wanted to pay for a paperback. So, I did what any good supporter of the arts does: I tried to find it used.

When that didn’t work, I tried to hit Haney up for a free copy in a trade for my latest, Ghost Notes. Haney, on to my scheme from the onset, said he’d love to trade but didn’t have a copy of his novel to give away. I waited a year, periodically scanning the Internet, looking for a way to get Banned for Life for less than 20 bucks, to no avail. It was clear if I were going to read this thing, I’d have to suck it up and become that rarest of all creatures: a genuine supporter of small press literature. I placed my order at Powell’s, coughed up the dough, and once I had it in my hands, I plopped onto my couch.

And didn’t get up for a long time.

Banned for Life is more than just another worthy contribution to the pantheon of rock novels. It’s the best one I’ve ever read.

Jason “Killer” Maddox is Banned for Life’s narrator, and his voice is central to the appeal of the novel. It’s also a voice I associate with Haney himself, having read much of his work at The Nervous Breakdown. Instances of its power and compelling nature abound, but the first few sentences capture it as well as any: “It all began with a fuck. What doesn’t? I fucked the wrong person; I fucked up the right one; somebody played me a song. It changed my whole life, that song. That’s why I later went to so much trouble to find the guy who wrote and sang it.”

And there you have the through-story of Banned for Life, but more importantly you have the tenor of the teller: passionate, provocative, profane. It’s the kind of voice I’m inclined to listen to.

But Haney doesn’t just rely on the stun of his yawp. Throughout the novel he reveals his talent for tropes, like this passage about his best friend Peewee: “At fifteen he’d soaked up more knowledge than most people twice and three times his age, and he’d ramble through it in breathless monologues, veering from subject to subject like a house-trapped sparrow trying to find an open window.”

Or in this description of Los Angeles: “At times it reminded me of a Doors song: laid-back on the one hand, ghostly on the other—a hammock stretched between tombstones.”

Or when he first meets Peewee: “There was a sense of stumbling on a secret somehow, as if I’d tripped on a rug and discovered a cellar that wasn’t in the floor plan.”

Haney is a writer, not a blogger, and anyone who picks up Banned for Life with hopes of finding something more elevated than the latest Internet click bait won’t be disappointed.

Jason and Peewee’s relationship is front and center for much of the novel, but just as compelling to me is Jason’s girlfriend Irina, a beautiful, married, chronically detached Serbian who over the course of the last half of the novel learns the underside of what her beauty gets her. Their mutual friend Milan tries to clue Jason in:

“You know Irina—I love her very much, but she plays her game with me, you know. She does this for a long time with me, but then I realize nothing will happen.”

Despite the warning, Jason falls hard for Irina, so much so he doesn’t like her passing affection for anyone, even his long-gone friend Peewee. “Here was a girl so astonishing in every way, I was always going to feel jealous, even of someone who’d been dead for years.”

Much passes between the two lovebirds, most of it maddening for Jason. Not since Jake Barnes and Lady Brett Ashley does a literary relationship seem so doomed for the outset.

If anything in Banned for Life made me bump, it was the occasional gesture of Jason to his own comeliness, or strength, or sexual prowess. For example: “There’s no other way to say it: I was a big, tall, handsome guy.” And later with Irina: “‘I think I’m going to leave,’ she said, and started to get up, but I pulled her down and fucked her nearly comatose, and she was nothing if not encouraging.” That great voice loses a bit for me in these instances. When Jason reflects, “I’m not trying to suggest my dick is that big, or I’m that great in bed,” we know he’s suggesting just that.

But these quibbles can't ebb the flow of goodwill I feel for Banned for Life. Haney has created a tale both tender and bombastic--not unlike your favorite rock album--and the book fulfills the promise of the rock novel better than any other to date.

And you better believe it’s worth $21.

Yours in laying down the law,

Art

Check out the Trailer for Stuck Outside of Phoenix the Movie, which premiered in May 2013.

Or try Stuck Outside of Phoenix in print form for just $10.

Or try Stuck for your Kindle for just $2.99.

Top Twenty Rock Novels of All Time: #5-2

What's this? Start at the beginning here.

5

Never Mind the Pollacks by Neal Pollack

The most brazen book on this list, Pollack plants his fictional doppelganger, rock critic Neal Pollack, at the scene of every important rock event in the latter half of the 20th Century, taking us from its birth with Sam Phillips in Memphis all the way to the fateful day Kurt and Courtney got married. Elvis, Iggy and Patti Smith all make appearances, but none of them are an compelling as Pollack, who rages against the dying of the rock.

Memorable Line: “They listened to Jimmie Rodgers and Fats Domino all across Texas, Elvis blowing flies off his lips, Scotty and Bill becoming progressively less famous, Neal chugging the cough syrup, staring bug-eyed out the window, singing ‘Baby, Let’s Play House’ as they steamed into New Orleans and Jacksonville and all roads leading to stardom.”

4

Stone Arabia by Dana Spiotta

Stone Arabia is story of one reclusive rock musician—Rik, who over the course of several decades has created The Chronicles, a mish-mash of music, journalism and ephemera encompassing his made-up rock star life—told from the point of view of his younger sister Denise, who’s struggling to get down her own chronicles. Spiotta beautifully renders a rock life as it gets old, and wears thin.

Memorable Line: “She was a woman who always appeared past her peak but who actually never had a peak.”

3

High Fidelity by Nick Hornby 

Record store owner and music freak Rob is obsessed with understanding his life through top-five lists, all while his ex-girlfriend sleeps with his upstairs neighbor. Hornby gives us an archetypal rock character, the sullen guy a little too attached to his own pop culture opinions while real life threatens to pass him by.

Memorable Line: “Tuesday night I reorganize my record collection; I often do this at periods of emotional stress.”

2

The Commitments by Roddy Doyle

The Commitments is a charming story of a batch of south Dublin nobodies who manage to put together a blues act that threatens to take them to the top. No novel has ever brought the vibe of rock so convincingly to the page, or the fragility of an pop act on a quick ascension to stardom.

Memorable Line: “You made up for the lack of variety by thumping the string more often and taking your hand off the neck and putting it back a lot to make it look like you were involved in complicated work.”

Check in Friday for the #1 Greatest Rock Novel of All Time.

Yours in laying down the law,

Art

Check out the Trailer for Stuck Outside of Phoenix the Movie, which premiered in May 2013.

Or try Stuck Outside of Phoenix in print form for just $10.

Or try Stuck for your Kindle for just $2.99.

Top Twenty Rock Novels of All Time: #10-6

What's this? Start at the beginning here.

10 

A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

A hodgepodge of music business types make up this patchwork of pathos in Egan’s ode to the fracturing of our communication in the new century. A Visit from the Goon Squad could be an early sign of where the novel is headed in the iPad era.

Memorable Line: “Everybody sounds stoned, because they’re emailing people the whole time they’re talking to you.”

9

Great Jones Street by Don DeLillo

Bucky Wunderlick is a rock star with a world of fans waiting on his next word, but does he have anything left to say? DeLillo probes the bizarre power of 1970s pop fame, and urban decay, all the while suggesting the two might have more than a little to do with each other.

“’Fame,’ he said. ‘It won’t happen. But if it does happen. But it won’t happen. But if it does. But it won’t.’”

8

How the Mistakes Were Made by Tyler McMahon

Laura Loss is a musician-barista in Seattle’s nineties music scene searching for a way out, when she stubbles upon two young musicians looking for help fulfilling their rock dreams. The subsequent band, the Mistakes, make a few, with Laura revealing her role in their demise in this gripping rock confessional.

Memorable Line: “I sometimes wonder what would’ve become of underground music in this country had Ford never produced [the Econoline van].”

7

The Blue Bourbon Orchestra by Carson Mell

The only writer to appears on this list twice, Mell recounts the plight of middle-aged guitarist and wanderer Charles Leslie deBeau, who finds himself in the titular blues band, spending years touring the south on a shoestring and winding up with a murder rap. Mell refines his storytelling chops from Saguaro to create this heftier, more realistic tome, but still with his patented seductive voice.

Memorable Line: “You only get to choose one path. And it’s not even a path. We just call it that to feel comfortable.”

6

The Wishbones by Tom Perrotta

Dave Raymond loves nothing as much as playing in his wedding band the Wishbones, but at thirty-one, the rest of Dave’s life is crowding him toward something more substantial. Perrotta tells the tale of a reluctant adult who lives to play cover songs that make people sweat on the dance floor.

Memorable Line: “Once, out of curiosity, he squeezed himself into a pair of leather pants, and it hadn’t been a pretty sight.”

Check in on Thursday, when we'll do #5-2.

Yours in laying down the law,

Art

Check out the Trailer for Stuck Outside of Phoenix the Movie, which premiered in May 2013.

Or try Stuck Outside of Phoenix in print form for just $10.

Or try Stuck for your Kindle for just $2.99.

Top Twenty Rock Novels of All Time: #15-11

What's this? Start at the beginning here.
    
15

The Last Rock Star Book, Or: Liz Phair, a Rant by Camden Joy

When Sioux City musician-narrator Camden Joy finds himself commissioned to write a “Where are they now?”-style biography of Liz Phair, he winds up revealing his own biography of failed love, obsession and institutionalization. Think Holden Caulfield pushing thirty in the 90s with a microcassette recorder.

Memorable line: “When we count one to ten … we don’t actually count but just repeat words we learned long ago.”
  
14

You Don’t Love Me Yet by Jonathan Lethem

Young, smart, and a bassist in an art rock band in 1980s Los Angeles, Lucinda Hoekke’s only problems are resisting the passion she feels for her guitarist—which would spell doom for her band—and The Complainer, a caller on the complaint line where she works who uses her vulnerability to leverage his way into her life. You Don’t Love Me Yet plays at the intersection of love, art and rock music, with Lucinda and her mates not paying enough attention to the road.

Memorable Line: “Falmouth’s first and most successful piece of art was himself, installed in the larger gallery of the world.”

13

A & R by Bill Flanagan

A & R tells the tale of Jim Cantone, who learned the music business during its Wild West days but finds the new 90s lot of corporate-thinkers disconcerting. This novel somehow succeeds in the all-but-impossible task of making a record label rep sympathetic.

Memorable Line: “These were people who shared nothing voluntarily, least of all their attention.”

12

Saguaro: The Life & Adventures of Bobby Allen Bird by Carson Mell

Saguaro is the tall-tale recounting of fatherless Arizonan Bobby Bird, who goes on to some success as a singer-songwriter but spends most of his life getting in and out of various entanglements with ladies and fringe types. Mell’s captivating, down-to-earth voice makes Saguaro completely devour-able.

Memorable Line: “This is a story I’m not too inclined to tell unless you are particularly interested in tales of full grown men turning into worthless assholes.”

11

Wise Young Fool by Sean Beaudoin

Wise Young Fool is about teen guitarist Ritchie Sudden, who’s found himself in a juvenile lock-up after the events from the night of his band’s first gig. Beaudoin unravels the conflicts that lead to Sudden’s detention by skillfully interspersing both front and back story, and with the verbal alacrity of a prose gymnast.

Memorable Line: “Ravenna’s caught two hundred meters below the reef, unwanted sexual pressure crushing her lungs, sharks below and the bends above, nowhere to go but farther inside herself.”

Check in Wednesday for #10-6.

Yours in laying down the law,

Art

Check out the Trailer for Stuck Outside of Phoenix the Movie, which premiered in May 2013.

Or try Stuck Outside of Phoenix in print form for just $10.

Or try Stuck for your Kindle for just $2.99.

Top Twenty Rock Novels of All Time: #20-16

The rock novel landscape was a barren place when I released my second, Ghost Notes, in 2008. I’d spent the previous year or so submitting it to 111 agents, barely finding anyone willing to look at a thing called a rock novel. I couldn’t blame them; there was little going on across publishing that might give them hope such a book would find an audience. But I had a vision for a series of novels that brings to life ego-driven lead singers, drunk guitarists, wishy-washy bassists, and drummers who break your heart with the way they hit the kick, snare and hi-hat. I self-published Ghost Notes—as I had my previous rock novel Stuck Outside of Phoenix (2003)—and booked events all over the country, pimping my wares and trying to get anyone excited about rock-tinged fiction. Those anyones barely existed.

What a difference five years makes.

Since the publication of Ghost Notes, rock novels have won the Pulitzer Prize (A Visit from the Goon Squad, 2011) and been named one of New York Times’ Ten Best Books of the Year (Ten Thousand Saints, 2011). Even Jonathan Franzen’s mega-blockbuster Freedom features a singer-songwriter searching for his way forward in the 21st century. Moreover, many not-as-popular-but-at-least-as-worthy rock fiction titles have managed to find their way into print in that span, and some of the best I’ve read. This subject—musicians making their way in the world while the inferno burns inside them, and after it burns out—has always fascinated me, and treating these stories with some dignity seems apropos as the rock and roll era enters its twilight.

All this to say, as I get ready to publish my third rock novel Badge in early 2014, it’s good not to be alone anymore.

With so many new rock novels published in the recent past, I feel compelled to chronicle what’s good, great and classic in this nascent genre. Over the week, I’ll announce my Top 20 Rock Novels of All Time, publishing five titles a day—starting with numbers 20 through 16 below—and I’ll march us right down to my pick for the Greatest Rock Novel of All Time, which I’ll crown on Friday.

Some might wonder my criteria for inclusion on this list. Each of these books qualifies as a rock novel because the main character is shaped by a rock ethos. As far as ranking, these are the main things I considered:

 1)    The promise of the novel’s beginning;


 2)    Its ability to deliver on that promise;


 3)    My desire to read the book again.


Got it? Okay, here goes.

20

Ten Thousand Saints By Eleanor Henderson

In Ten Thousand Saints, Vermont teenager Jude loses his best friend to a drug overdose and is forced to live with his dad in the East Village of the 1980s, only to fall under the influence of straight-edge punks who don’t have sex, do drugs or eat meat. Henderson fills her novel with a tapestry of familial relationships that any latch key kid can relate to.

Memorable Line: “She observed Jude's romance with straight edge as she might have observed his first love—warily, with a mother's pride, hoping that, in the end, his heart wouldn't break too hard.”

19

Never Mind Nirvana by Mark Lindquist

Never Mind Nirvana is a story of arrested adolescence, all with Seattle’s nineties music scene providing background and ambience. Dive bars, post-punk references, and romances that come and go faster than three-minute rock songs get heavy play here, along with a date-rape case that leaves protagonist/lawyer Pete Tyler wondering if the fun’s gone on too long.

Memorable line: “A Blur rip-off of a Pavement song plays on the house stereo as Carol shakes a martini.”

18

Twisted Kicks by Tom Carson

One of the earliest rock novels, Twisted Kicks is the eery story of Dan Lang, a young musician who meets with trouble in New York’s punk scene of the late 1970s and comes back home to Icarus, Virginia to sort through the detritus. Carson’s voice reminds me of great 20th century male writers like John Updike, the darkness of Lang’s past creeping into every line of prose.

Memorable line: “‘That girl’s going to commit suicide some day. She’s got what it takes.’”

17

Boarded Windows by Dylan Hicks

Boarded Windows’s prominent curiosity is boomer aesthete Wade Salem as seen through the eyes of his (perhaps) son, a ruminative, unnamed protagonist and record collector looking for some essential truth to help break through his ennui. Expect references to Aristotle, stories about famous jazz bassists, and women who can only have sex while listening to John Philip Sousa.

Memorable line: “I was wearing, to paraphrase Gogol, whatever God or JCPenney sends to a provincial town.”

16

The Cost of Living by Rob Roberge

The Cost of Living chronicles the trip home to Connecticut of musician/drug addict Bud Barrett to confront his dying father about their past and, God willing, get beyond it. Plenty of sex, drugs and rock and roll punctuate Barrett’s road from guitarist in a seminal rock band to hard-living junkie and back. Roberge’s ability to render the details of drug culture shines through.

Memorable line: “But still, in that moment, things were peaceful, and peace was one of the rarest visitors my head ever received and I wanted to savor it.”

That's it for today. Check in Tuesday for #15-11.

Yours in laying down the law,

Art

Check out the Trailer for Stuck Outside of Phoenix the Movie, which premiered in May 2013.

Or try Stuck Outside of Phoenix in print form for just $10.

Or try Stuck for your Kindle for just $2.99.

Quicky Stuck the Movie Update

If I get one question from folks out here in the real world, it's "When's the movie coming out?"

I'm glad to say there's been some good news in that direction. Right now, Nico has one offer for distribution, with what sounds like a couple of other distributors very interested.

We all know nothing is done until it's done, but this is promising. Here's the Facebook announcement.

Everyone hang tight, and hopefully we'll have more news soon.

Yours in laying down the law,

Art

Check out the Trailer for Stuck Outside of Phoenix the Movie, which premiered in May 2013.

Or try Stuck Outside of Phoenix in print form for just $10.

Or try Stuck for your Kindle for just $2.99.