Spider Kiss
He claims he's not a fan of rock-and-roll, but somehow Harlan Ellison's seminal novel based on the career of Jerry Lee Lewis ended up in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. One of the first - and still one of the best - dissections of the wildly destructive rock-and-roll lifestyle, Spider Kiss isn't...
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He claims he's not a fan of rock-and-roll, but somehow Harlan Ellison's seminal novel based on the career of Jerry Lee Lewis ended up in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. One of the first - and still one of the best - dissections of the wildly destructive rock-and-roll lifestyle, Spider Kiss isn't about giant cockroaches that attack Detroit or space invaders that smell like chicken soup. Instead, it's the story of Luther Sellers, a poor kid from Louisville with a voice like an angel who's renamed Stag Preston by a ruthless promoter. Preston's meteoric rise on the music scene is matched only by the rise in his enormous appetites - and not just for home cooking - and soon the invisible monkey named Success is riding him straight to hell. This raucous early novel reinforces Ellison's reputation as one of America's most dynamic writers.
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Format: paperback
ISBN:
9781595820587 (1595820582)
ASIN: 1595820582
Publish date: December 26th 2006
Publisher: M Press
Pages no: 200
Edition language: English
This was a pretty good book and evidence again that Ellison is simply not constrained by genre. I had never read this assuming it was a bit of hack work from relatively early in Harlan's career, but like all the better pulpish writers he inserts his own voice and ideas into what is basically writin...
One of the best novels written about Rock n' Roll. Written pre-Beatles, and one of Ellison's earlier novels, the plot centers around a Presley/Holly type performer and is full of cynical looks at the music business. The plot and theme has an eerie resemblance to the film, A Face in the Crowd which a...
When I first picked this book up, I had read a bit of Ellison's work here and there. Short stories mostly, as that is typically what he writes. I didn't know at all what to expect from this book, but I was very pleasantly surprised. If you're a fan of the behind-the-scenes of the lives of notorious ...
I went on a fierce reading jag of Ellison, pretty much gobbling up everything I can get my hands on. Although this isn't my favorite of his works (I prefer the short stories) he does demonstrate his versatility.