Rock Fiction as a Genre
This section is devoted to a recent spate of articles discussing rock fiction as a genre. Each article mentions a variety of rock fiction novels, often with a few lines of review and/or criticism for each.
Taylor, D. J. (2005, August 14) Why the great rock'n'roll novel is so elusive. The Independent. Retrieved from database.
This article discusses the difficulties of writing rock fiction, touching on the tropes and clichés of the genre, and mentioning some of the early history and examples of the form. The author hypothesizes that mainstream novelists who turn their hands to rock fiction fall into one of three types and gives examples of each. The second half of the article reviews Mark Radcliffe's Northern Sky and Douglas Cowie's Owen Noone and the Marauders.
Cox, T. (2007, June 24) Resisting the rock-novel demon: If DeLillo and Rushdie can't pull it off, what hope is there for the great rock novel? The Sunday Times. Retrieved from database.
This article synopsizes and criticizes the novel Great Jones Street, disputing its status as one of the best works of rock fiction. To a lesser extent, it also does the same for The Ground Beneath Her Feet. The author bemoans clichés common to the genre as well as poor writing specific to individual novels, including Collins's Rock Star and Jeff Gomez's Our Noise. The most elaborate dissection is done on Jonathan Coe's The Dwarves of Death, Cathi Unsworth's The Singer, and Libby Purves' Love Songs and Lies.
Thomson, G. (2007). Looking for a Rock'n'roll Hero: Where Is the Novel That Can Capture the Essence of Rock'n'Roll? Retrieved Oct. 30, 2009, from The Guardian, London, UK. Web site: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2007/jul/20/lookingforarocknrollhero.
The author believes the "Great Rock'N'Roll Novel" has yet to be written after briefly dismissing a handful of contenders including Espedair Street; Great Jones Street; Expresso Bongo; The Ground Beneath Her Feet; The Commitments; Namedropper; and Powder. It outlines three hypotheses why the genre fails: the difficulty of describing music with words, otherwise good novelists slack off when writing rock fiction, and that the audience for rock fiction is hypercritical.
Chong, K. (2008). Born to Be Wild: Is It Possible to Write a Good Rock 'n' Roll Novel? Retrieved Oct. 13, 2009, from Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Toronto, Canada. Web site: http://www.cbc.ca/arts/books/rocknovels.html.
The author of this article has actually written a rock fiction novel, Baroque-a-nova (2001). He argues that rock and roll's juvenile themes are inherently anathema to those of serious literature. He singles out Great Jones Street and The Ground Beneath Her Feet as notable failed attempts to marry the two incompatible worlds. The article then reviews and synopsizes the Ibi Kaslik's The Angel Riots, crediting her fresh female perspective on the genre, and complimenting her prose.
Ducker, G. (2008). Is It Only Rock and Roll? Retrieved Oct. 13, 2009, from The Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles, California. Web site: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/jacketcopy/2008/06/is-it-only-rock.html.
This article discusses what the author calls "The Great Rock And Roll Novel," an idealized who discusses the qualities his idealized conception should have, evoking characteristics from Stanley Booth's The True Adventures of the Rolling Stones and Robert Penn Warren's All The King's Men. The article mentions another half dozen rock novels before reviewing and synopsizing John Darnielle's Master of Reality from the 33 1/3 series. Each book in this otherwise nonfiction series is devoted to a particular album. Darnielle, the lead singer of The Mountain Goats, has created a short novel purporting to be the journal of a 1985 high schooler in a mental ward obsessed with the 1971 Black Sabbath album of the title.