The Ink in the Grooves
Conversations on Literature and Rock 'n' Roll
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
Drop the record needle on any vinyl album in your collection, then read the first pages of that novel you've been meaning to pick up—the reverberations between them will be impossible to miss. Since Dylan went electric, listening to rock 'n' roll has often been a surprisingly literary experience, and contemporary literature is curiously attuned to the history and beat of popular music. In The Ink in the Grooves, Florence Dore brings together a remarkable array of acclaimed novelists, musicians, and music writers to explore the provocatively creative relationship between musical and literary inspiration: the vitality that writers draw from a three-minute blast of guitars and the poetic insights that musicians find in literary works from Shakespeare to Southern Gothic. Together, the essays and interviews in The Ink in the Grooves provide a backstage pass to the creative processes behind some of the most exciting and influential albums and novels of our time.
Contributors: Laura Cantrell, Michael Chabon, Roddy Doyle, Bob Dylan, Steve Earle, William Ferris, Dom Flemons, Rhiannon Giddens, Dave Grohl, Peter Guralnick, Amy Helm, Randall Kenan, Jonathan Lethem, Greil Marcus, Rick Moody, Lorrie Moore, the John Prine band (Dave Jacques, Fats Kaplin, Pat McLaughlin, Jason Wilber), Dana Spiotta, John Jeremiah Sullivan, Richard Thompson, Scott Timberg, Daniel Wallace, Colson Whitehead, Lucinda Williams, Warren Zanes.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Novelists, musicians, and other cultural movers and shakers muse on the intersection of literature and rock music in this rich collection of essays. In "Ubu Lives!: Remembering Punk and Its Stories," Rick Moody makes a case that Pere Ubu was "perhaps one of most formidable rock and roll bands ever." In "The Genius and Modern Times of Bob Dylan," Jonathan Lethem recounts interviewing Dylan: "It's awfully easy, taking the role of Dylan's interviewer, to feel oneself playing surrogate for an audience that has never quit holding its hero to an impossible standard: the more he offers, the more we want." The standout is "Whack Fol the Daddy-O," Roddy Doyle's bristling and moving sociopolitical account of his shifting relationship with Irish music and of writing his novel The Commitments. Not each essay is as strong (Michael Chabon's "Let It Rock" is a bit too inward-looking to connect with any larger notion of a symbiosis between literature and music), but taken together, the pieces offer an impressive level of insight. Music lovers with a literary bent will find this worth tuning in to.