The rock novel has long been my obsession. I have a loose idea of what it is and made it midway through writing one without knowing what it is I am trying to do. Here’s the thing: Rock ‘n’ roll figured out long-form storytelling a long time ago (and called it ‘rock opera’ with Tommy, by the Who, as a prime example). Then, gosh dang, the movies figured out how to rock (with plentiful examples, ranging from Rock ‘n’ Roll High School to Rushmore to Rocky Horror Picture Show).
Novels, though, are last to the party, because they never quite figured out rock.
Yes, there have been plenty of artistically and commercially successful rock novels (with Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad, Dana Spiotta’s Stone Arabia, and Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom, as recent examples) but they don’t quite go all the way like those two kids in Meatloaf’s ‘Paradise by the Dashboard Light.’
A typical rock novel germinates through a writer with a deep affection for music. Plots then follow a range of templates: The aging rocker trying to get by, the mysterious disappearance (and reappearance) of a superstar burned out by fame, a love triangle with one character a brooding rocker, small-town fans whose lives are made bearable by a band’s records, a group of quirky people coming together to form a band who get successful and realize they can’t stand each other, and a handful of others.
At its worst, a rock novel includes paragraphs of made-up rock lyrics (sometimes in all caps) that call attention to a novel’s inability to recreate the sonic experience of listening to a band like The Who.
For me, the best rock novels I’ve read are more embodied with rock than overtly about rock (for example, the novels of Kathy Acker and Tom Robbins). One way of looking at it, the more rock that goes into a novel, the less rock that’s in the novel.
So how do you go about writing a rock novel?
It’s helpful to start by figuring out the qualities of rock that can fuel the novel you want to write. Rock has reinvented itself and gone back to its roots (and sold itself out) so often, it’s not easy to know what the hell rock is. Here are a couple of the qualities of rock that are guiding my writing:
One way of understanding rock is hiding in plain site: in that forty-year-old catch phrase, Sex, Drugs & Rock ‘n’ Roll. There’s a reason why this phrase stuck. Sex, Drugs & Perry Como doesn’t have the same ring to it. S,D & RR captures what rock can do that other types of media experiences can’t. Sex, Drugs & Video Games doesn’t work; likewise Sex, Drugs & Novels doesn’t, either.
The terms sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll fit so well together in a phrase because of what they have in common. They point to visceral, experimental, and rebellious experiences — even more so among kids.
Though rock is fundamentally subversive (more than any other form of mass media when done right), it’s also true that you’ll find kids and their parents these days listening to the same music. However, it’s the way the music is experienced that differs. A 16 year old experiences rock as rock. Adults experience rock as nostalgia for being 16. (Rock doesn’t mean to be elitist, but you can’t stay 16 forever.) In no way does this sell short rock ‘n’ roll as experienced by adults — nostalgia stirs such powerful emotional states, it’s almost like being 16 all over again.
The novel, as a creative form, does not illicit visceral, experimental, and/or rebellious experiences in the same way, nor does its appeal necessarily differ among generations. That’s not the novel’s game. However, a novelist who draws from the qualities of rock ‘n’ roll in her writing and is dedicated to making it work might just make it work … with the end result, a rock novel.
To clarify, a rock novel doesn’t have to depict kids or sell to kids, any more than a rock novel needs to feature musicians. The point is that a rock novel is itself a kid, suspended in the throes of perpetual adolescence, capable of intense awkwardness, anger, and love.
If those themes suggest what underlies a rock novel, they doesn’t say anything about how rock ‘n’ roll storytelling unfolds. Admittedly, this has had me stumped for ages, until yesterday, and like Sex, Drugs & Rock ‘n’ Roll, the answer has been hiding in plain sight.
It goes back to the Who’s rock opera, Tommy, which is for me is a fantastic work as well as a template for rock ‘n’ roll narrative. It’s episodic, which makes sense for a rock opera made up of album cuts. Episodic storytelling works in novels, too. (In Poetics, Aristotle wrote that the worst kind of plots are episodic. You just can’t get any more Establishmentarian than Aristotle, and all the more reason why a rock novel should unfold in episodes.)
The big lesson I gathered from Tommy is the way characters enter to say their piece (or sing) to other characters or the audience (for example, Cousin Kevin, the Acid Queen, the Pinball Wizard). It’s not like Pete Townshend made up this technique, as it’s a common approach to musical theatre and opera. Townshend employed the technique as a way to make his rock opera work. A song in a rock novel does not need to be a song. It can be a monologue or conversation that carries a mood and moves the plot. Following the structure of a rock opera like Tommy might just be the way to make a rock novel work.
January 13, 2012 at 1:54 am
[...] best rock novels I’ve read are more embodied with rock than overtly about rock.” [...]