Stark Raving Elvis
"Funny...scary...and no mean feat."
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"Stark Raving Elvis is no mean feat. It possesses an authentic feel, its language is raw and energetic, and like Byron's homage to Elvis, it is also the real thing." "Mr. Henderson has written a funny, revealing novel that shows what happens to those who refuse to let youth go." "Stark Raving Elvis tells a story that's simultaneously preposterous and profoundly concerned with contemporary American culture and its myths. Henderson has a fine ear for dialogue and a way of writing that doesn't condescend to his characters or ring false." "An alternately funny and scary look at one man's American Dream corrupted into nightmare." "Henderson pulls off the hat trick: a breezy, highly readable charcter study, an indelible modern fable set in the kingdom of the Idol Rich, and a titillatingly oblique consideration of The Pelvis himself. There is dark fun to be had in Stark Raving Elvis, and Henderson has it. This is a nifty, aptly titled read." "William McCranor Henderson's is the first instance I have ever encountered of a serious rock novel, in which the atmosphere and inner dynamic of rock 'n roll assume the same thematic and even symbolic importance that jazz carried in the works of an earlier generation. The result is both fascinating and frightening, for at the cold heart of jazz there is something like spirituality, but at the heart of rock 'n roll there is a cold-blooded nihilism, nowhere more aptly captured than in the contest for Elvis imitators that is the core of Henderson's novel." "Henderson has a real feel for the sad, ridiculous squalor in America, the tacky bars and beauty shops and motel swimming pools, the even cheaper dreams of the people who hang out at them. What Henderson does best, though, is transform the seedy into musical prose." |
