Boy Island

By Camden Joy

Camden Joy, with his inimitable torrent of language, sensation, and sound, tells the picaresque saga of a once-popular rock 'n' roll band as they cross America from California to Virginia, flying below the Mason-Dixon line and the cultural radar in the heady days of early 1991. As the Persian Gulf War escalates in the background, we follow the four band members on solo and group adventures amidst the vacuous American landscape of diners, clubs, colleges, and hotels. Throughout the band's journey deep into the heart of an increasingly disposable culture, the country is imagined as a series of random TV landscapes, the future is seen bursting with garbage, the things of nature are rendered invisible, and experience itself becomes subordinated to pornography and the merest of junk-food analogies. A powerful eulogy for the once limitless possibilities of the American road, an anti -- On the Road, Boy Island is an ultimately redemptive meditation on the power of music and love, the only things that can save us.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0688170331
• ISBN13: 9780688170332
• Release Date: January 2000
• Publisher: Quill
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 1.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.0" x 0.8" x 5.5"

Customer Reviews

CAMDEN JOY GOES TO ELEVEN!

Back in the heady post-Camper Van Beethoven days of a Desert Storm 1991, with Manchester in the background and Seattle right around the bend, a van with 4 different variations on "musician" drive towards College Town, U.S.A. They search for an elusive tonnage of all sorts, the perfect pop song, and what (if anything!) it means to be indie. "Boy Island" is like a song -- ya know, like, one of those Good Ones -- it made me really happy and want to tell everyone. Camden Joy has become one of my favorite authors. He has one of the most specific and lovely and smart voices that i have encountered in a long time. Honestly, I always recommend reading "The Last Rock Star Book, or Liz phair, A rant" before Boy Island. If you like that one (and you will) you will be prepared to venture further into the passionate rants and intimate details of all his other work.oh and by the way, it would be appropriate to buy this book from an independent bookstore. try: ... for the store nearest you! It's way more "indie" to do so.

Boy Island is a great book!

Boy Island by Camden Joy is poignant, hilarious and moving. Joy really knows how to spin a yarn and his descriptions of a rock bank touring America in a van during the Gulf War are so vivid you can practically smell the beer and get car sick along with the rhythm section. Joy's ear is flawless when depicting the the absurd conversations and unavoidable tensions and egos amongst the band, he must have played in many bands himself. I love this book and can't wait to read more of Joy's work. He is a important and exciting voice in American literature and will be fun to watch!

What a sad, funny, luminous piece of writing..

Imagine, if you will, Having a Wild Weekend as photographed by Robert Frank: funny, offhand, ironic, with moments, here and there, of deep, aching poignance.Camden Joy's dialogue is dead-accurate and wicked funny. His descriptions of roadside (bar-side, club-side, gym-side) Americana make great goofy sense. The book contrasts the articulate, appallingly funny interior dialogues of the musicians with the somewhat more monosyllabic noises that emerge from their mouths when they actually 'speak.' Set against the backdrop of the Gulf War [in the reign of Bush I], Boy Island follows four characters--David Lowery, vocals and guitar; Pete Sosdring, bass; Johnny Hickman, guitar; Camden Joy, drums--on a journey through the American south, seeking out a night in someone else's bed, a break in the routine, another round of tepid beer...Under the author's watchful eye--at once snarky and forgiving--we get to watch four disparate and insular individuals come together to make music. Not music that changes the course of the world; but music, that, for the one night, makes you believe, again, in the possibilities of a working band. In the magic of rock'n'roll. And what just might be possible, in your own life, if you could just manage to hold that feeling through the night, and, then, past dawn.

A great Rock 'n' Roll road story.

Camden Joy's novel Boy Island is a tribute to the true nature of the rock 'n' roll band. Joy paints a realistic picture of what it is to be a "rock star," while pulling no punches in showing the sad and sophomoric aspects of his subject, a has-been rock band feeding off their past glory and spiraling into obscurity. Joy's blending of fact and fiction allows the reader both emotional access and a sense of camaraderie with band members not usually experienced in traditional music "exposes." You experience firsthand the draining aspects of life on the road, and the author uses the fact/fiction blend to pen a conversational candor you just can't get from band members in the "pomp and poseur" world of rock. In the end, you feel more saddened by the state of rock 'n' roll itself than for the its burned out ambassadors, yet refreshed by the reading experience.

Intriguing mix of fact, fandom, and fantasy.

Camden Joy's earlier works (street postering, pamphlets, zines) took music writing to a new level of weirdness, humor, and danger. Now, with his second novel, he's proving himself a fine novelist as well. A strange mixture of roman a clef and stalker fantasy makes for a book like no other. It also portrays the drudgery of touring better than any "rock novel" I've read.