This novella is written around the tracklisting of an album - Automatic For The People by R.E.M. - but it's about so much more than that. You don't even have to be on intimate terms with the record it describes, because that's not really the point. This is a meditation on the intense relationships we have with music when we're young and misunderstood. It's a short and bittersweet story of friendship, loss, love and teenage obsession.
Which is not to say that the music becomes irrelevant. Each track is given its own chapter and description, gradually propelling the story forward through anecdotes and musings on the relationship between rock musician and fan. It's also perhaps a story about being young at a certain time - before the internet made it so much easier to reach out and find every detail of a favourite artist at the drop of a hat.
'Automatic' will resonate with anyone who has ever rifled through the dusty racks of record shops in search of that one elusive single, or bought terrible magazines purely to cut out and keep that one sidebar feature on the band that says aloud everything they're feeling about life.
Matthue Roth has a genius for getting under the skin of the experience of growing up. His prose is clean and elegant, filled with little pearls of description and detail. Lighthearted moments meet tragedy in his tribute to a friend who died young, which retains great pathos but never becomes sentimental. His thoughts on life and relationships are tender and deep. Scenes of being young and hip and weird in America mingle with wisdom from the Vilna Gaon.
If you've read Yom Kippur A-Go-Go, Roth's previous autobiography, you should definitely download this eBook. If you like R.E.M., you should give it a try. Or if you just know how it feels to be a teenager discovering rock music in all its wonderful, ridiculous glory, you should read 'Automatic' and tune into the memories.
