New from Melville House: Please Step Back by Ben Greenman.
About the book, from the publisher:
A swirling Sixties saga of the rise and fall of a true American icon: A rock star...Ben Greenman is an editor at The New Yorker. His short fiction has appeared in the Paris Review, Zoetrope: All Story, McSweeney’s, Opium Magazine, the Mississippi Review, and elsewhere. His previous book is A Circle is a Balloon and Compass Both: Stories About Human Love.
…But not just any rock star. Rock Foxx is one of the special, genre-busting stars of the era who created a new kind of music that both embodied the times and took it someplace exhilarating, the way Sly Stone did, or James Brown.
Foxx is an outrageous showman whose unprecedented mixed-race/mixed gender band makes socially conscious music that's tribal and infectious, taking him to the height of worldwide rock stardom. But then his contagious, upbeat music begins to darken, get edgier, angrier … then ends abruptly amidst rumors of sexual debauchery and drugs and violence, even as the culture itself explodes into assassinations and massive riots … until people ask themselves: Whatever happened to Rock Foxx?
New Yorker editor Ben Greenman answers the question by getting inside the turbulent life of Foxx and the people who love him to make Please Step Back more than a tale of fleeting pop stardom. Instead, it's the absorbing story of a complicated moment in our history, when music played a key part, and an artistic genius could lead the way.
The Page 99 Test: A Circle Is a Balloon and Compass Both.
Posts
