Ambient Parking Lot [Paperback]

Pamela Lu (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 8, 2011

A rollicking exposé of modern life, Pamela Lu's Ambient Parking Lot is about the unspoken, with aims to represent the voice of an emerging counterculture. The book chronicles the artistic whims and serious-minded endeavors of a band of musicians who record the sounds of parking lots, as they wander the overdeveloped landscape of a city and its exurbs, collaborate with a dance troupe to protest a war, and stumble into the sought-after yet volatile public and academic arenas. Crafted with language that alternates between the poetic, witty, outrageous, and tender, Lu's work of fiction moves swiftly from the droll to the compelling, narrated by a "we" that relates not just the story of a band but of a country--its continuing dependency on the automobile and the consequences to the natural world: "We zoomed toward the outlands, where drooping electrical wires traced patterns of drift and escape. We hurtled into the hinterlands, where underground silos housed long-range ballistic missiles. Smog was a steady artifact, a low-lying smear across a canvas of middling air." Reminiscent of the ecological plot of a Hayao Miyazaki film, the band grapples with their contemporary environment and amplifies the parking lots' white noise for their audiences, while a consciousness grows in them of what they are really hearing and in the reader of where Lu is taking us. The band's transformation in the end takes place with the help of two momentous characters, a pirate radio station master and a performance artist (each narrated by an "I" in a separate chapter that interrupts the main storyline), who reveal their own paths to transformation.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Ambient Parking Lot is ... about one band's quest to capture the world's most perfect ambient noise in a parking lot. Wait, don't go away! It's great ... Lu uses the Ambient Parkers ... as a foil by which she [draws] the whole business of the ... underground art establishment under her perceptive and witty lens. --Cooper Berkmoyer, SF Bay Guardian

Hilarious and wistfully Romantic, Lu's Ambient Parkers are familiar to anyone ... at the co-op: "We slipped underground ... to discuss proper ambition. After several cycles of soul-searching, we deemed ourselves ready to produce a full-length album ..." Lu excels at this type of aesthetic language. --Devin King, Make Magazine

A long chapter written from ... a pirate radio station master, to whom the band ... reaches out for recognition, stunned me with its quick changes and emotional breadth. I challenge anyone to not be profoundly moved by [its] conclusion. ... There are interesting resonances with ecopoetics in [this work]. --Sueyeun Juliette Lee, The Constant Critic

Two huge narrative interruptions occur in the novel that are executed with much aplomb and shift the narrative into different registers. ... Ambient Parking Lot is a really enjoyable read; a funky novel with a lot of unexpected surprises. --Stephen Hong Sohn, Asian American Literature Fans

A comedic abridgment of contemporary art movements and modern car culture ... Guided by Lu's characteristically dazzling prose, Ambient Parking Lot ... goes camping, to the La Brea Tar Pits, listens to Glenn Gould, meets a Jacuzzi-owning patron, experiences Muzak-related betrayal, and takes care of Agatha the dancing beast. --Anji Reyner, WWNY TV 7

About the Author

Pamela Lu is also the author of Pamela: A Novel and The Private Listener, a chapbook from Corollary Press. Additional writing appears in the anthologies Bay Poetics and Biting the Error, and in periodicals such as 1913, Antennae, Call, Chain, Chicago Review, Fascicle, and Harper's. She lives and works in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Product Details

• Paperback: 200 pages
• Publisher: Kenning Editions; First Edition edition (April 8, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0976736438
• ISBN-13: 978-0976736431
• Product Dimensions: 5.7 x 8.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #298,592 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Pamela Lu is the author of "Ambient Parking Lot," "Pamela: A Novel," and "The Private Listener" (a chapbook from Corollary Press). Her writing also appears in the anthologies "Bay Poetics" and "Biting the Error," and in periodicals such as "1913," "Antennae," "Call," "Chain," "Chicago Review," "Fascicle," and "Harper's." She lives and works in the San Francisco Bay Area.