It's Only Rock and Roll: An Anthology of Rock and Roll Short Stories

Book Overview

A fiction anthology of 22 stories that celebrate the many sides of rock and roll and its cultural impact. Among the many gems here are Lee K. Abbott's wild portrait of a delusional, megalomaniacal rock star on his comeback; T. Coraghessan Boyle's wryly comic depiction of a recently deceased guitarist trying to find his way to rock and roll heaven; Kathleen Warnock's wistful tale of a schoolteacher in the 1980s who meets the real Elvis; Janice Eidus's hip romance between a fifties doo-wop singer and his high-school sweetheart; Lucinda Ebersole's fine riff on Kafka's Metamorphosis, in which a nineties guy named Sammy wakes up one morning as a Beatle; and Geoffrey Becker's moving story of a road trip taken by a guitar-playing father and his teenage son, a journey on which they learn the real meaning of the blues.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1567920896
• ISBN13: 9781567920895
• Release Date: January 1998
• Publisher: David R. Godine Publisher
• Length: 291 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.5" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

Groovy

By culling the best of a pop-driven genre, editors Janice Eidus and John Kastan have succeeded in putting together a collection of stories that work like good songs. --Thaddeus Rutkowski, author of Roughhouse

A wonderful tribute to the greatest voices in rock and roll.

"It's Only Rock And Roll" transports the reader to another dimension. The stories weave through the greatest voices in rock and roll, treating the reader to an amazing journey. I especially enjoyed the story, "Elvis in Wonderland" by Kathleen Warnock. Roller coaster buffs will surely enjoy this ride with Elvis. Lucinda Ebersole's story had me rolling in laughter. This book is a must for real rock and rollers.

From the Publisher

As the publisher, it may seem ingenuous to say that we are really excited about this book. Still, we think this says it best:From Publisher's Weekly: How different this anthology would be if it had been published in, say, 1972, when rock and roll still had its messianic buzz. Twenty-five years later we have a book of 22 stories about rock in which not a single character even thinks about doing acid. If that makes you feel, well, old, welcome to the overriding theme of the book. Jill McCorkle captures the mood here in the wonderful "Final Vinyl Days" (also the title of her current collection from Algonquin), in which the narrator, a mid-30s male rock aficionado, experiences both the phasing-out of real records and the parallel rejection (by a series of girlfriends) of his alternative, non-advancing lifestyle. In a similar vein, the 35-year-old father in Geoffrey Becker's "Bluestown" (from his novel of that name) removes his 15-year-old son from high school for an unauthorized journey to Canada, ostensibly to share his last shot at a steady gig but really in a hurtful effort to overcome his own sense of failure. Then there is the mood of rueful mundaneness in Madison Smartt Bell's "Never Mind," covering a day in the life of a "covers" band, whose members know that it will never make the big time. Still, all is not resignation. More upbeat tales include Kevin Downs's funny story of how an ex-punker came to love that schlock classic, Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven"; Harold Jaffee's stream-of-consciousness post-gonzo rant "Madonna"; and Lucinda Ebersole's throwaway, "Bigger Than Jesus," about a man who wakes up as a Beatle--Ringo, of course. (Sept.)