Twisted Kicks

by Tom Carson

Dan Lang, a punk rocker, returns to his hometown in Virginia to find out what his friends from high school are doing

Genres: Fiction, Punk

259 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 1981

About the author

Tom Carson is the author of Gilligan’s Wake, a New York Times Notable Book of The Year for 2003. Currently GQ’s “The Critic,” he won two National Magazine Awards for criticism as Esquire magazine’s “Screen” columnist and has been nominated two more times since then. He also won the CRMA criticism award for his book reviews in Los Angeles magazine.

Before that, he wrote extensively about pop culture and politics for the LA Weekly and the Village Voice, including an obituary for Richard Nixon in the latter that the late Norman Mailer termed “brilliant.” He has contributed over the years to publications ranging from Rolling Stone to the Atlantic Monthly. His fiction and poetry have appeared in Black Clock. His verse and other random writings can be found at tomcarson.net.

In 1979, he was the youngest contributor — with an essay on the Ramones — to Greil Marcus’s celebrated rock anthology, Stranded. With Kit Rachlis and Jeff Salamon, he edited Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough: Essays In Honor of Robert Christgau in 2002.

Born in Germany in 1956, he grew up largely abroad at the hands of the U.S. State Department. He graduated in 1977 from Princeton University, where he won the Samuel Shellabarger award for creative writing. A former resident of Washington, D.C., New York City, and Los Angeles, he now lives in New Orleans with his wife, Arion Berger, and can be found all too often at Buffa’s Lounge on Saints’ days.

Reviews

[Nathan "N.R." Gaddis]

Is it fair to be disappointed in Tom Carson’s Twisted Kicks? It’s an early first novel. It pales considerably next to his later two fantastic and purely edible novels, Gilligan’s Wake and Daisy Buchanan’s Daughter. The small saving grace, er uh, rather, point is that Carson’s written only these three novels so one feels rather a bit compelled toward this easy completionism score. And, more importantly, the Gatsby has a cameo here too. Were Carson to write a commentary on the Gatsby I could conceive bothering to reread that high school textbook of=a novel.

Meanwhile, what we have in Twisted Kicks, aside from disappointment, is a competently written straight novel about sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll. A little novel about a posse of high school chums and what they find themselves up to in their short post-high school lives. Getting high mostly. But they still feel lots of stuff. And occasionally this reader felt a twinge of interest in their insufferably uninteresting lives. Sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll being rather uninteresting.

Here’s the backcover ::

“(a novel about a punk rock singer who gets in trouble in New York and goes back home and finds out what happened to everyone else)” and, blurb wise ::

“In Twisted Kicks, Tom Carson captures the humor and horror of a rock and roll adolescence and creates an unforgettable gallery of survivors and casualties. I couldn’t put it down; echoes of my own misspent youth ricocheted from every page.” -- Robert Palmer “Pop Life” columnist, The New York Times.

I almost put it down.

Let’s note one other small bit which carries through from Kicks to Wake to Daisy : there’s an ex-CIA character in here who reflects Tom’s world-traveling growing-up experience, but which is much more fully developed in The Professor of Gilligan and Daisy herself in the Daughter novel. Really, everything worthwhile in here is exponentially worthwhile in those other two highly entertaining and wittily composed novels.

Disappointing. Yes. But competent. It’s a solid first novel. Without much daring. I mean, Barth spoke of novelists aiming at “passionate virtuosity” ; there being value in virtuosity for its own sake, and who can deny some value to passion. But getting the two together is what counts for noveling. Here, Carson has competency but no virtuosity ; passion is located in a few characters who feel stuff, but there is little passion in the prose which is where it counts in the world of fiction.

Sum :: don’t miss out on reading Tom’s two mature novels. Read Kicks just for the hell of it.


______________
Here’s a thing that the ex-CIA guy says which I thought rather nice. What it made me think about is those awkwardly written first=contact episodes in the Star Trek universe. To wit, Vollmann cites Walzer regarding the justification of violence, It being not so important what the rules are, but that there be rules.

You know, Daniel, once I was in Kashmir, and my host, a very distinguished old boy from the Empire days, took me to a formal reception at the residence of the local maharajah, one of the few still out there--maharajahs are three to a block in some parts of Delhi--and I put on my best etiquette for the occasion. Trouble was, my etiquette wasn’t theirs. I made one gaffe after another. Thought I’d balled things up completely--and this was a man we needed, you follow me. Afterward, I was horrified. But my host told me, No, no, Andrew, you misunderstand. They were quite impressed. They knew that your code was different from theirs, but they could tell that you had a code--that was what was important to them, and that’s what they saw.”

That’s simply a nice illustration of where the Universal is located within diversity of cultural practices, in the form, in the very having of a code, no matter of what it consists. Lesson over.



Som’ore Tome stuff ::
_____________
I will be reading Twisted Kicks later some time this year when I need nothing but to kick=back. Then Now I'll I am be the only Carson=Completist on goodreads -- all threee (3) books. Meanwhile, I need some blog space.

Here's a two page excerpt from the novel Tom is working on. Turn to page 210 (or use the search thing for "Tom Carson" ; it's one of those weirdly sofisticated pdf-pages thing) ; Title : "Cassandra Is Typing An Excerpt from a Novel in Progress" which is a really cool "meta" kind of title (the meta consists in the fact that it's probably not a meta comment about Tom, nèe Cassandra typing the thing you're reading but rather the simple mundane fact that the story you will be reading is about the boring task of typing a novel-in-progress (which we suspect of being another Wake)) :: http://digital.turn-page.com/i/220881/0

Tom also writes entertainment criticism. Currently he is Main Man kinda=guy at GQ. I've not kept up with his not-noveling but a while back I read some of his reviews and didn't like them like I like his novels so I don't really read his stuff in GQ. But you could read his stuff in GQ if you'd like or if you are so disposed ; but I just want you to know that he writes novels too, three of them to date, and they are :: Gilligan's Wake: A Novel && Daisy Buchanan's Daughter &&& the one underwhich this blog is being created, the unread and oOp Twisted Kicks allofwhich can be purchased for veryvery little $$$. So, the GQ page for all his stuff there :: http://www.gq.com/search?qt=dismax&am...

To continue the previous paragraph after that ugly html=paste :: here are a few title highlights of what you might find at the GQ page which Tom wrote because who the hell wants to go to GQ without a hall=pass of intellectual sofistication?
"Toronto Film Fest: Tom Carson on the Clogged, Interminable, Bullsh*t Of Cloud Atlas"
"The Death of Philip Seymour Hoffman: Did We Just Lose America's Best Actor?"
"Obama's State of the Union: Nice Hat, But There's No Rabbit Inside"
"GQ Reviews Mitt: Humanizing Romney Is as Hard as It Sounds"
"The Chiwetel Ejiofor Viewing Guide"
Bunch of tv and movie things..... I'm sure it pays the bills or something.

Anywayš, let me know what you tink. And read a Carson books soonish something.

[Maureen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tom Carson's first book records the lives of Dan Lang and his friends in the fictional town of Icarus, VA in the late 70's-early 80's. Lang, singer in a punk rock band, left his unfulfilled dreams of success as a musician in New York City to return to the town he left only two years earlier. What he finds when he gets there is a mixture of drugs, ennui, suicide, infidelity, and a whole lotta cigarettes waiting to be smoked. The style of the novel teeters between surreal and blase, an accurate depiction of how many teens and people in their twenties experienced life at the time.

I used to put random quotes on my refrigerator: they could be something clipped from a newspaper, written down from a book I was reading, or even notes I found on the sidewalk. One of them, a headline torn from an old Interview said, "You must never tell stupid people the truth." I just found that scrap of paper inside this book, along with the author's inscription to me: "for Maureen - Sometimes you have to try and tell stupid people the truth anyway. love, Tom C."

[Candy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is one of my favorite books of all time. I have read it three times. Once when I was 14, once when I was 18 and once again when I was 23. Everytime I read it I seemed to understand the whole story differently. If you are into rock n roll you will love this. It's a must read.

[Kenneth Laddish · Rating 5 out of 5]

All 7 people who have read this on Goodreads really liked it. This was the first Punk Rock novel- what a bunch of hipster Poseurs we have up in here.

[Sarah Padgett · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not only a hard to find book, it is seminal in it's place between the tail end of Boomers and the beginning of Gen X. A must read for:
music elitests
punks
Disenchanted Gen x'rs
Curious Millinials
Hunter S. Thompson fans
Lester Bangs fans

Also if you need more grit than Nick Hornby, Carson's your man.

[Robert Jr. · Rating 1 out of 5]

It sucks. The first few chapters caught a hold of me dealing with some 20-something dead-enders hanging out in squalor still very much caught up in nostalgia for their high school party days and lamenting about a friend who had committed suicide even though none of them liked her. The novel primarily consists of long droll conversations about high school and events around the time of the suicide and not much else. There's the intro character who's run back to his small town because he killed a junkie in an alley due in part to a song he performed, at least according to him. It seemed in the early chapters that the novel was about to work up to something but it never did. When it started shifting POVs it lost me, so I started speed reading. This book is bland, the conversations were repetitive, and none of the characters were really that great at all in any respect. I cannot recommend this, it's just really boring.

[Bella Baxter · Rating 3 out of 5]

Το μυθιστόρημα εξερευνά τη ζωή μιας παρέας ανθρώπων που μεγάλωσαν και γνωρίστηκαν μέσα από τη μουσική του ροκ εν ρολ. Για αυτούς, το ροκ εν ρολ δεν είναι απλώς μουσική, αλλά μια "κοινή θρησκεία" και ένας τρόπος ζωής.
Η ιστορία παρακολουθεί τους χαρακτήρες καθώς ανακαλύπτουν μέσω της μουσικής πώς να ερωτεύονται, πώς να εξεγείρονται και πώς να ζουν με ένταση. Το βιβλίο εμβαθύνει στο αν αυτή η κουλτούρα τούς οδηγεί τελικά στην ευτυχία, στον θάνατο ή απλώς στην απελπισία, αναγνωρίζοντας ότι αυτό είναι το εγγενές ρίσκο και τίμημα της ροκ εν ρολ ζωής.
Η αλήθεια πως δυσκολεύτηκα να ακολουθήσω τη ροή.
Σύσταση:Μπερδεμένο και χωρίς ουσία .