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

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

Mark Edmundson

Language: English

Pages: 240

ISBN: 006171349X

Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub


“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.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Might as well jump. Jump! —VAN HALEN, “JUMP” Contents Cover Epigraph Beginnings (Hot Shits) 1. The King of Rock and Roll (Music) 2. Taxi! (Money) 3. A Moviegoer (Jobs) 4. Life Drugs, Death Drugs (Consciousness) 5. How to Leave New York (Nature) 6. Disco Nights (Eros) 7. School Days (Depression) 8. Woodstock II (Vocation) Acknowledgments About the Author Other Books by Mark Edmundson Credits Copyright About the Publisher BEGINNINGS

judgments. She once read a few novels by Henry James on my recommendation and pronounced him “not such a much.” It didn’t seem a good idea to send her my stream-of-consciousness innovations. My father was a great example to me in many ways, though I sometimes think the major lesson he taught was: Do what you please. Consult no other being. This is not the worst counsel to have at certain moments, but as a Golden Rule, it has its drawbacks. My father was not a hands-on dad. Once, when I was about

imagine—no, I could feel—the overtaking joys of those cotton sheets and that luxurious shampoo. Lilly loved her body, not only because she thought it beautiful, but also because it gave her such pure pleasure. She talked about the joys of this or that encounter she’d had in the same tones she used for the sand and the shampoo and the sheets. She did not criticize things: she took pleasure in what she could and tried to keep her distance from the rest. She could write reasonably well, engagingly

fair, damn it, and it was gonna end. When you push one of these drives—the heroic or the compassionate—to the complete exclusion of the other, trouble usually spills over the brim. Without a reserve of compassion, the hero becomes a brutal killing machine, like Achilles in his wrath. But without a jolt of thymos—the desire for distinction—people can go slack. After a while, uncompromising hippies sometimes acquired the consistency and appeal of moldering white bread. That was the story for half

tall, with the regal face of Jewish Athena and a white stripe (Agape) running through her raven-colored hair (Eros)—signed on as the one-woman SWAT team. She marched across the room and stood over Pelops for a moment, looking down at him as though from the mountaintop. Then, with an estimable lack of grace, she flopped onto the floor, put a long forefinger on his blue-jeaned, oil-stained knee, and said, “Hi, I’m Susan. What’s your sign?” “Aquarius,” Pelops admitted. Pelops was an Aquarian: a

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