The Fine Wisdom and Perfect Teachings of the Kings of Rock and Roll: A Memoir

by Mark Edmundson

Overview

“Hilarious, harrowing, and ultimately inspiring.... Truly, there is something arresting and wonderful on every page.”
— Michael Pollan

“With sentences that sometimes astonish” (Matthew Crawford, author of Shop Class as Soulcraft), celebrated cultural critic Mark Edmundson has written a hip and hilarious coming-of-age memoir about one man’s miscues and false starts as he enters the world after college. Through exhilarating adventures, he attempts to answer the timeless question of who he is, while contemplating what role music, love, work, drugs, money, and books will play in his life.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780061713491
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	05/10/2011
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Mark Edmundson is a professor at the University of Virginia and the prizewinning author of numerous works of cultural criticism, including Why Read?; Literature Against Philosophy, Plato to Derrida; and Teacher. He lives in Batesville, Virginia.

Table of Contents

Beginnings (hot shits) 1

1 The King of Rock and Roll (music) 11

2 Taxi! (money) 37

3 A Moviegoer (jobs) 67

4 Life Drugs, Death Drugs (consciousness) 93

5 How to Leave New York (nature) 117

6 Disco Nights (eros) 141

7 School Days (depression) 165

8 Woodstock II (vocation) 191

acknowledgments 225

What People are Saying About This

Matthew Crawford

“Edmundson doesn’t just chronicle, he channels, the epoch of rock.... He makes us feel its hopes; its confusions; its genuine revelations…. Concert security dude, cabbie, bouncer: these jobs provide him critical lenses on a succession of cultural moments, and on the never-ending task of becoming an adult.”

Michael Pollan

“Everything you want a coming-of-age book to be: hilarious, harrowing, and ultimately inspiring. . . . Brims with sparkling observations about everything from drugs, sex and rock and roll to movies, career, and friendship. Truly, there is something arresting and wonderful on every page.”

Philipp Meyer

“A compelling and accomplished memoir recounting the dissolution of the sixties and the beginning of the modern, more cynical era that followed. . . Candidly describes Mark Edmundson’s journey as a lost twenty-something seeking meaning through sex, drugs, Marxism, rock & roll, and ultimately, teaching.”

Editorial Reviews

Not your typical rock tell-all. . . . An entertaining coming-of-age story that cloaks a social critique of post-Sixties USA.” — Rolling Stone (3 ½ stars)

“A near-perfect memoir.... In this erudite, coming-of-age riot, the author deftly navigates the purgatorial rites of passage between university and professional life, developing insightful social critiques and candid self-evaluations along the way.... [Edmundson is] an honest, poetic and hilariously entertaining narrator.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“Everything you want a coming-of-age book to be: hilarious, harrowing, and ultimately inspiring. . . . Brims with sparkling observations about everything from drugs, sex and rock and roll to movies, career, and friendship. Truly, there is something arresting and wonderful on every page.” — Michael Pollan, author of Food Rules: An Eater's Manual and The Omnivore's Dilemma

“A compelling and accomplished memoir recounting the dissolution of the sixties and the beginning of the modern, more cynical era that followed. . . Candidly describes Mark Edmundson’s journey as a lost twenty-something seeking meaning through sex, drugs, Marxism, rock & roll, and ultimately, teaching.” — Philipp Meyer, author of American Rust

“Edmundson doesn’t just chronicle, he channels, the epoch of rock.... He makes us feel its hopes; its confusions; its genuine revelations…. Concert security dude, cabbie, bouncer: these jobs provide him critical lenses on a succession of cultural moments, and on the never-ending task of becoming an adult.” — Matthew Crawford, author of Shop Class as Soulcraft

From the Publisher

Not your typical rock tell-all. . . . An entertaining coming-of-age story that cloaks a social critique of post-Sixties USA.

Rolling Stone (3 ½ stars)

Everything you want a coming-of-age book to be: hilarious, harrowing, and ultimately inspiring. . . . Brims with sparkling observations about everything from drugs, sex and rock and roll to movies, career, and friendship. Truly, there is something arresting and wonderful on every page.

Michael Pollan

Not your typical rock tell-all. . . . An entertaining coming-of-age story that cloaks a social critique of post-Sixties USA.

Rolling Stone (3 ½ stars)

"Not your typical rock tell-all. . . . An entertaining coming-of-age story that cloaks a social critique of post-Sixties USA."

(3 1/2 stars) - Rolling Stone

Mark Edmundson's book The Fine Wisdom and Perfect Teachings of the Kings of Rock and Roll has alert, rueful-earnest prose to go with its overblown title, a nice retrospective feel for youthful appetites (more metaphysical than sensual), though rock is primarily a signpost in his coming-of-age-in-the-1970s story. Edmundson may lean more toward Woody Allen than Warren Zevon, but in his wide-eyed receptivity to whatever fortune comes his way, his youthful self might have stepped out of a dozen early Jackson Browne tunes.
—The New York Times

Howard Hampton

Edmundson (English/University of Virginia; The Death of Sigmund Freud: The Legacy of His Last Days, 2007, etc.) delivers a wily, playful, self-denigrating memoir. In this erudite, coming-of-age riot, the author deftly navigates the purgatorial rites of passage between university and professional life, developing insightful social critiques and candid self-evaluations along the way. After graduating from a collegiate "hippie" hideout in Vermont (Bennington), the author drifted into seedy, mid-'70s Manhattan. There he met Pelops, his streetwise guide who disapproved of the author's bourgeois character but took the young Edmundson under his gargantuan wing, shoveling generous piles of philosophy, particularly Marx, onto his plate. Pelops also hooked him up with a job as a roadie for rockers like Alice Cooper and the Allman Brothers at Roosevelt Stadium in New Jersey. As the memoir develops, however, the famous lyricists and musicians of the introductory chapters recede into the background. Edmundson writes that "rock recharges the Will . . . the appetites for pleasure, power, sex, fun, freedom, what have you." Though the "kings of rock and roll" hand over the tools and lyrical schematics, writes the author, the rest is up to us. Inspiration springs from every page, as the author revels in his renaissance-manliness-"how many other bouncers stand at the door of the discotheque and memorize Browning poems?"-and proves to be an honest, poetic and hilariously entertaining narrator. A near-perfect memoir. Author appearances in Virginia

Kirkus Reviews

A compelling and accomplished memoir recounting the dissolution of the sixties and the beginning of the modern, more cynical era that followed. . . Candidly describes Mark Edmundson’s journey as a lost twenty-something seeking meaning through sex, drugs, Marxism, rock & roll, and ultimately, teaching.

Philipp Meyer

Edmundson doesn’t just chronicle, he channels, the epoch of rock.... He makes us feel its hopes; its confusions; its genuine revelations…. Concert security dude, cabbie, bouncer: these jobs provide him critical lenses on a succession of cultural moments, and on the never-ending task of becoming an adult.

Matthew Crawford