| Title | : | That Summertime Sound |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 1576875202 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9781576875209 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Hardcover |
| Number of Pages | : | 304 |
| Publication | : | First published July 21, 2009 |
I’ll scramble your brains for breakfast, leave paintings on your walls!
I doubted I could’ve said it any better myself, what it was like to be alive and confused, so happy I could kill someone and so angry I could laugh.”
Freshman summer, 1986: You think you’re looking for happiness and you’re in love with the world’s best and most obscure band. Your roommate tells you both reside in Columbus, Ohio. These aren’t the first fantasies you’ve indulged. Blind faith, after all, may be your one true religion. In the thrall of dead philosophers and mad prophets on the radio, you charge off on a group pilgrimage to Anywhere, Everywhere, Nowhere, USA. You still believe in sex, drugs, and rock and roll—but you’re not sure in what order. You’re digging in the crates for that one true thing.
You know something is happening, but you don’t know what it is….
That Summertime Sound is the liner note to that perfect summer single and all its aching echoes, written with the gimlet eye of Jim Thompson, Kazuo Ishiguro’s sense of wonder, and a true believer’s ear for music.
“Matthew Specktor’s That Summertime Sound isn’t so much a book as it is a door, hinged in memory, and swinging wide to every tenderhearted throb of lust and longing and precocious regret still there where you left it, at the periphery of adulthood. How does the novel perform this trick? By prose as lucid and classical as Graham Greene’s in The End of the Affair, yet saturated in detail such that if you’d never had the luck to outgrow an 80s’ teenage dream in Columbus, Ohio, you’ll feel you had after reading it.” ⎯
—Jonathan Lethem
That Summertime Sound Reviews
-
Oubliez tous vos clichés sur le bon vieux temps et le cinéma à Hollywood. Ce livre va vous faire perdre vos dernières illusions, et vous allez tomber de haut. C'est le récit de la vie d'un homme qui a construit un empire à la hauteur du rêve américain.
Parti de rien, avec beaucoup d'audace, Beau Rosenwald réussit à gravir les échelons et à se faire un nom. Un destin qui pourrait faire rêver si on n'allait pas fouiller au-delà des apparences. En effet, l'envers du décor n'a rien de mirobolant ou d'enviable à y regarder de plus près. Les personnages y vivent des drames, ont des secrets, des difficultés comme ou plus que tout le monde. Les artifices sont des masques capables de faire illusion, mais pour tromper, qui, tromper quoi, combien de temps et à quel prix ?
Ce récit est le constat amer d'un fils illégitime qui n'a pas trouvé sa place...
L'écriture est écorchée vive, crue, presque animale. Le ton est cinglant quant aux désordres des âmes humaines. On aborde les excès en tout genre, les déchirures et le fameux point de non-retour.
Un roman sombre, chaotique que l'on a du mal à lire parce qu'au fond on n'aimerait mieux rien savoir de l'abject, de l'absurde et du désespoir.
Si cela vous dit, oubliez strass et paillettes et enfoncez-vous dans les ténèbres ! -
I know it's not fair, but I reached a certain point in the book (around 160) and felt like I was reading an okay version of a mash-up between "Almost Famous" and "Juliet, Naked." Then I thought, wow how great would this book be if Cameron Crowe was the author. That can be distracting as you read.
Solid fun summer read. As an avid music lover I connected to that part of the book. I understand the reasoning behind some of the interweaving story lines, but at times it felt like there were too many of them to wade through, mostly because they were so shallow in their coverage, they weren't developed enough for me to care about them. The last thirty pages really came together and were finely tuned to carry the book to a close.
Still, man, I'd love to see Cameron Crowe have a run at this, it would be a different angle than "Almost Famous," so it wouldn't be like he was repeating himself. -
I wish I could have read this book with 2 different experiences - one: the way I read it where I recognized a good many of the thinly veiled people from my own 20s. Then again without knowing everything.
Anyway, I found it a weird experience. Spektor (who I don't know) reminds me of things I'd forgotten: the fratboys throwing shit at the punks from speeding cars. (An egg that hits you in the stomach at 60 mph HURTS! I know this from experience.) And Ron House spitting when drunk. And the "VIP room" at Crazy Mamas.
Some of the people I remembered but couldn't get a hold of - like who WAS engaged to the guy form Bauhaus? "Krist Cooley" I think I remember but not his name, and I don't know if I know Donnie or not.
And the tripping. Oh yes, the tripping.
Let me just say this it absolutely, positively captures a time. Fetishizing 1986 Columbus, OH will forever crack me up. -
Males want women they cannot have. They want to discover bands no one else knows. And they feel compelled to go on journeys, some actual, others emotional. Well, this is what male authors want us to believe anyway. This isn’t a complaint though, it’s just that to pull this off, the author has to make this story their own, and Matthew Spektor certainly comes awfully close to doing so by taking his story to the mid-1980’s music scene in Columbus, Ohio, a world few of us know, but most will be happy to visit
-
I was there, too. He pretty much nails the atmosphere -- people, places, the music. Names have been changed to protect the -- um ,er, innocent? The narrator's love interest is flighty and annoying. I hope the person she's based on wasn't really like this (I met her once or twice. It's probably a good thing I didn't know her well because if she was like this, I would have wanted to smack her upside the head).
-
A must-read for music lover--this is a coming-of-age story as the protagonist embarks on a quest to find his favorite band during a summer in Columbus, Ohio. (It's also a must-read for Columbus people who might be able to figure out the real versions of the book's "Crazy Ladies" or "Nick's Nook.")
http://www.agitreader.com/news/that_s... -
A damn good coming-of-age book here, evoking the narrator's college-era confusion alongside a more distanced perspective. Plus: nods to some terrific bands (The Embarrassment! Swamp Rats! etc.)
-
SQ Audiobook
-
http://www.bookslut.com/fiction/2009_...
