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Title: Glimpses by Lewis Shiner ISBN: 0-312-26743-6 Publisher: Griffin Trade Paperback Pub. Date: 12 March, 2001 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.82 (11 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: listen with your heart - you will understand
Comment: All right, I know it's strange to start speaking about a book, which touches upon the Doors, Beach Boys and Hendrix with a quote from a Disney song, but it IS an appropriate one.
Because this book is not only about music, but also about how we react to it, and how our life changes (maybe) because of music.
I'm too young to remember the 60s (being born in 1976), but this novel really fleshed out that era and its people for me. I think that for those, who really was there it will be even better.
Glimpses is not fantasy in ebveryday sence. I'd say it's magical realism, not unlike Jonathan Carrol or Haruki Murakami.
And the thing that makes it really great, is that it can convey to you the feeling of listening to the best music that never was, and I can't think of many authors who can wright about music so vividly. That's a tremendous achivement.
In short: this book lets you glimpse another world. And it as real as this one. I don't know how Mr. Shiner does it. It's a kind of magic
Rating: 5
Summary: Magical!
Comment: Jill likes this folk song that is quite appropriate for our generation. The song, written and sung by a Gen Xer, tells about how all the Baby Boomers tell her that "it must be sad to have been born a little late." Being born late, the Gen Xer missed out on so much: the Summer of Love, Peace Marches, etc. The Gen Xer thinks this is a load of crap and wishes the Baby Boomers would just get over it (and grow up, for chrissakes). I've expressed a similar sentiment before in these pages, but directed at the generation before the Boomers and their fixation on the crash of the American Pie and the loss of Valens et al. So when I say that I found this Boomer book--about how the music and culture of their collective childhood was so great--fabulous, you know that it faced a tough audience.
Glimpses does not hide the fact that it is about the 60s and rock music (given the demographics of the population, probably wise--there are a lot more reminiscing Boomers than fed-up Xers), and I likely took my time turning to it because it wore its influences on its jacket. I bought the book when it came out because I knew Lew Shiner from Austin and had all his other books. Lew's previous novels are kind of a mixed bag. His first, Frontera, was published by Baen, not your usual source for quality literature, and while enjoyable enough at the time, I'm not sure that Frontera has weathered quite as well as its cyberpunk contemporaries. In his second novel, Deserted Cities of the Heart, Lew's style and subject matter improved tremendously. In my internal cataloging schema, I tend to group Deserted Cities of the Heart with Pat Murphy's The City, Not Long After and Karen Joy Fowler's Artificial Things. See the paradigm shift: from Cyberpunk to feminism in one novel. Deserted Cities of the Heart was still genre, however, and Lew totally dispensed with that in his third novel, Slam. It's not quite correct, but the voice in my head associates Slam with the line in Michelle Shocked's "Anchorage" that goes "what's it like being a skate-boarding punk rocker." The writer's progress in the three novels is readily apparent, and I liked each succeeding book much more than its predecessors. But there was still that jacket painting of Jim Morrison, Brian Wilson and Jimi Hendrix prompting the irrational knee-jerk response.
Several things finally broke through my resistance, including Glimpses winning the World Fantasy Award, unsolicited comments and recommendations for the book from several First Impressions and Rondua members, and then it appeared in the middle of all the Anthony Powell that Alexandria Digital Literature recommends that I read. A long plane trip to New Jersey was the final straw.
I started reading it hesitantly, then slowly relaxed and started enjoying it rather than dreading it. By the time I got to page 50 I had to close the book and let the wave of "good vibrations" flow over me before continuing. It did not matter that I had waited three years before reading this--everything was alright in the world because I was only a sixth of the way into a book that I knew was my type of novel and I did not have to worry about stopping reading for at least 2,000 miles.
Glimpses is about the late 60s, but it is much more about the late 80s and one man's relation to both decades, his father and his wife. Ray Shackleford repairs stereos in Austin, his father has just died, and he is starting to realize that his marriage is falling apart and that he is an alcoholic. Escaping from it all, he sits in his repair shop imagining what things would be like if things had been different. If he could have understood his father. If the Beatles had not broken up. If that aborted session that would have been their last studio album had actually come about. And then there it is, coming from his radio: "The Long and Winding Road." But not the over-produced, orchestrated version that we are familiar with, but a more basic version. Something that was not supposed to exist.
It is a fantasy novel, no doubt about that, but the ready acceptance of the fantastic by the characters means Glimpses is more kin to Borges or Carroll (i.e., magic realism) than Feist or Eddings. While the fantastic elements are fun and Shiner does a superb job of re-creating the atmospheres of the recording sessions, it is Ray, his friendships and his family relationships that drive you to keep reading. Before you are halfway through this novel, you want happiness for Ray, but know that there will be a lot of pain and suffering before he will achieve peace. And you know that his power to re-create music that never was will be as much a danger to him as a gift.
Glimpses has my highest recommendation, and given a sufficient waiting period, will likely be on my list of Top 10 favorite novels.
Rating: 5
Summary: Best rock & roll novel EVER!
Comment: Lewis Shiner is BRILLIANT. If U're a music fan, U'll love GLIMPSES. Shiner balances his narrator's personal life & problems (dead father, crumbling marriage, lost feeling, new love in his life) with the music that gives meaning 2 it all 4 him. Perhaps most impressive R the glimpses of famous rock & roll stars -- The Beatles, Brian Wilson, Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix -- Shiner gets U up close 2 all these greats, & HE DOESN'T BLOW THE IMPORTANT DETAILS. U'll feel like U've MET these people, & every moment of Bing close 2 them rings true. U'll B there when their music is created, C where it comes from, & know what it means -- 2 all music fans. Hallucinatory, vivid, brilliant -- would make a heckuva movie. Shiner's got the music in him. U will LOVE this book. Clearly, the greatest rock and roll novel EVER.
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Title: Awopbopaloobop Alopbamboom: The Golden Age of Rock by Nik Cohn ISBN: 0802138306 Publisher: Grove Press Pub. Date: 04 November, 2001 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: Performing Rites: On the Value of Popular Music by Simon Frith ISBN: 0674661966 Publisher: Harvard Univ Pr Pub. Date: April, 1998 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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Title: The Commitments by Roddy Doyle ISBN: 0679721746 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 17 July, 1989 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title: Sweet Soul Music: by Peter Guralnick ISBN: 0316332739 Publisher: Back Bay Books Pub. Date: 01 July, 1999 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
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Title:Pet Projects: Brian Wilson Productions ASIN: B000083LRM Publisher: Ace (U.K.) Pub. Date: 07 February, 2003 List Price(USD): $17.98 Comparison N/A, buy it from Amazon for $14.99 |
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