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June 29, 2007

Rock rock, rock rock, rock and roll novellll!

The rock novel has a history of luring unsuspecting writers to their doom. DeLillo, Rushdie, Coe, et al. All ships sunk on the sirens’ rocks. God rest their pirate souls. Yarrr.

It seems that the best pop-themed novels are those that dance nimbly around the edges of their subject, never quite getting to the microphone, or even the moshpit: books such as The Rotters’ Club, or High Fidelity, or Tom Perrotta’s The Wishbones. It is when a writer attempts to be more definitive that problems occur. How do you encapsulate the ephemeral, train-spotterish world of pop and rock without coming up with a book that is ephemeral and train-spotterish?

A criticism that has often been levelled at the rock novel is that, because the literati are largely upper-middle-class, they haven’t ever experienced the struggle and graft that go with dreaming of a headline slot at Glastonbury. This is almost certainly rubbish, partly because the middle class has just as much historical right to comment on rock existence as the working class, and partly because musicians are, on the whole, roughly 13½ times lazier than novelists.

I want to write an anti-rock and roll novel called “Country Folk Sing the Blues”. It would mostly be about a large redheaded fellow in a 10-gallon hat and sparkly shirt playing alt-country folk versions of Oasis tunes and getting laid by librarian barmaids.

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5 comments on “Rock rock, rock rock, rock and roll novellll!”

  1. Duncan H says:

    Hmm. Maybe someone should send this Tom Cox a copy of Paul Quarrington’s Whale Music…

  2. Anne C. says:

    Duncan, you are a man after my own heart. I said the same thing over at Quillblog.

  3. John McF says:

    Seems like this guy would love Whale Music, afterall he did say, “the best pop-themed novels are those that dance nimbly around the edges of their subject, never quite getting to the microphone.”

    He might also like Iain Banks’ Espedair Street.

  4. m says:

    Baroque-a-nova, anyone?

  5. von b says:

    I like Banks quite alot, but Espedair Street was, uh, okay, but not profoundly resonant.

    The truly ‘Great Rock Novel’ has really not yet been written. It seems like an odd blind-spot in our culture. Somebody oughtta do something about it someday.

    There have been several Great Rock Movies made. ‘Velvet Goldmine’ comes to mind.

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