Now it can be told: Elvis Presley was . . . a closet rock critic.
Satirist Pollack, who punctured the pretensions of literary criticism in The Neal Pollack Anthology of American Literature, savages rock and its sycophantic critics in his first novel. Fittingly, he is the main character in the book, which is couched—not always successfully, in terms of point of view—as a biography by the megalomaniac, lickspittle academic Paul St. Pierre. “Neal Pollack” is the first and greatest of rock critics, a superhuman consumer of booze and dope and a participant in every form of ambisexual perversity. (The larger-than-life character is clearly inspired by the late Lester Bangs, the manic, prolific subject of Jim DeRogatis’s biography Let It Blurt, while St. Pierre appears modeled after high-middle-brow author Greil Marcus.) The central conceit—that rock criticism is more important than the music itself—drives the action through the entire history of rock ’n’ roll. “Pollack” appears, Zelig-like, at every critical moment in rock to shape the music’s direction: he befriends Elvis Presley in Memphis, hits the road with neophyte folkie Bob Dylan (and beds Joan Baez), hangs out with the Velvet Underground, creates Iggy Pop’s over-the-top stage persona, roadies for Bruce Springsteen, forms the Ramones, has an affair with Patti Smith, and mentors Kurt Cobain. Along the way, his avatar, bluesman Willie “Clambone” Jefferson, invents Detroit funk and rap music. Numerous real-life critics, including Bangs, make cameo appearances. There’s even a mock discography. The loopy, sex- and drug-steeped, violent plot, though unsatisfactorily resolved, incorporates a number of dumb yet pointed parody lyrics that take the abundant wind out of rock’s soiled sails. The choicest moments come in fine-tuned mocking of rock criticism’s fatuous clichés, radically overblown praise, and flavor-of-the-month bandwagon jumping. The message: Get over it, guys, it’s only rock ’n’ roll.
Loud, wild, messy, and fun—just like the best rock ’n’ roll.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-06-052790-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2003
Categories: GENERAL FICTION
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The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
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Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
Categories: GENERAL FICTION
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
Categories: GENERAL FICTION
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