Customer Reviews

The Carpet Frogs: Music After Tomorrow

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I bought this book after hearing some buzz about it on a Beatles web site. A cool little novel with nods to the Minneapolis music scene, The Beatles and The Catcher in the Rye.

If you are a Beatles lover, you must by this book. This is one of the most different books that I have read in a very long time and I read the entire book in an airport while waiting for my plane. The author has quite an imagination. I almost wished that the book was non-fiction instead of fiction.

This is a great read. I am a fan of traditional, established literature and don't often take a chance on new fiction but I am glad I read The Carpet Frogs. The deceptively casual tone of the author's voice leads you into a believable world that becomes increasingly halucinatory before you know it. I think fan's of today's commercial fiction as well as "literary snobs" will enjoy this book. Check it out.

A spiritual, surreal novel with an amazing ending! Early on, I thought the opening interview and labeling the chapters as "tracks" like a music album was just a slick, empty gimmick by the author. But after finishing the novel I realized it served a very specific purpose. The book can be interpreted a number of different ways, similar to music lyrics.

I heard about this book through one of the many music rags I read who said it was cult classic rock novel. Although I wouldn't put it on the same shelf as Delillo's 'Great Jones' I found the book's plot technique fascinating although the book's plot structure may be too disjointed for some readers.

I ignored the one negative review since it sounded like a strange, blatant personal attack on Arlt rather than a fair review of his work. I strongly question if "the reviewer" even read the book. (Arlt may want to consider a bodyguard to protect him from stalkers).

I am a big John Lennon fan and the Beatles. Everything in this book checks out factually from their days in Hamburg and Liverpool. I wish their was more background on the Beatles and Sutcliffe's relationship with Trisda's character (who I am guessing was based on Astrid Kircher). The book was a slim 120 pages so there was room! But is just a minor complaint.

Apparently one of the movie studios has the film rights so maybe we'll see the film version soon. Can I nominate Gus Van Sant to direct? It's the type of dark, depressing story he could do justice. Although I would have the movie set someplace else besides Minneapolis. The story would fit better in New York or London.

I highly recommend this book if you love rock music and the Beatles.

You should probably avoid this book.

I was intrigued by the description of this book and the positive reviews but was dissapointed in a major way. From the poor writing to flimsy characters and contrived plot I shook my head with embarassment through out the entire book.

It appears to be self published, which isn't immediately apparent from looking at the Amazon page, and that's an indication of the times for better or worse. I'm glad that anyone can write a book, that I can stumble upon it, and give it a chance. I just wish my first encounter with a gamble like this yielded some literary reward or pleasure. Arlt is obviously a gigantic music fan but, as far as I can tell, needs to hone his skills in all departments before continuing trying to translate his fandom into entertainment for others. He borrows and mutates the Bealtes story, specifically John Lennon's, in a way that I found distasteful and glib.

I hate to spend time being negative but I felt so let down by this book I had to pass along my thoughts.

Check out www.thecarpetfrogs.com
talk about doing beatles songs?

A great book filled with a chilling plot twist. Was Symon Smith's life based in reality or just an interpretation of Jerad Christianson's lyrics? Or a combination of both? This book can be interpreted a number of ways.

The low production cover and binding of the book and text made it feel like a garage band's demo tape, (which The Carpet Frogs are/were). A perfect touch that I didn't put together till later.

Symon Smith lives!

The Carpet Frogs, the rock band that could. A makeshift fiction headed by, Symon Smith, a young man who believes to be ex-Beatle drummer Stuart Sutcliff's wayward son - though this is a falsity devised by his mother - Alan Arlt has done his part to keep the music and lifestyle he loved so much alive. Set during rock's late heyday, those early 1990s, the book chronicles the scattered theology of rock culture into a memorable doctrine of an almost-deceased religion. Offered as a track-by-track listing one finds on an actual CD, the novel commences and concludes with band interviews, an interesting twist to the normal verse-chorus-verse format patrons have grown accustomed. This technique not only acquaints the reader instantly with the characters, but ties together what may have been missed, providing a comprehensive overview of the story behind the story. The Carpet Frogs begins with Trisda and her relationship with her son Symon, an intelligent rebel snagged between a history he had no say in and the uncertain future. All that is sure is his equal love for both mother and music. The story is well known, and you may argue the ending probable; yet the path Arlt journeys along is as unique as refreshing to the captured reader. Captured serves as an ideal adjective, as would hold true for any book written with such abstract symmetry. The Carpet Frogs, true, is the tale of a struggling band, but surpasses the normal rhetoric of partying and record company woes, and enters a realm far more suitable for the subconscious to travel. The first half focuses on Smith's relationship with guitarist Jerad Christianson - a 16 year-old prodigy with an unfortunate disposition towards various drugs - and drummer Mason Gallager. Hence the beginning can be surmised as such: you know they're incredible, their fans know they're incredible, they're pretty damn sure they're incredible, but, as with most young creative persons, discipline just hasn't been learned. And then the book turns. As in Albert Camus's The Stranger - a novel that, at the exact midpoint, completely dissolves and reconfigures into surreal narration - Arlt leads his frogs into the poetic mythology of the unconscious, creating a dream world trapped between existence and fantasy, painting a morbidly real portrait of passions lost and life amiss, plans never to occur, tears never to be shed, songs left unsung. That is why I cannot indulge exact details of the novel's eventual landscape: it is almost a choose-your-own adventure in that sense. You remember being a kid and praying to avoid that giant boulder about to crush Indiana Jones because you thought the snake witch doctor was your ally. The Carpet Frogs does much the same, except, as do the characters, you realize that free will is as questionable to our race as God to Nietzsche. Certainly there is a three-dimensional reality we all relate with and understand, to some degree. Yet beyond that lies an unspoken universe containing many planets, an infinite number of consciousnesses, and these are waters the frogs eventually find themselves swimming within. But let us indulge slightly, as we needn't attribute too much loftiness to this reptilian architecture. A good novel is precisely such because it can be related to, and this is where Arlt is strongest. Choosing two main themes - heroin abuse and suicide - and expounding in prose their awkward existence, this is where the reader is led truly on their adventure. They are stories we know all too well, with the likes of Nirvana's Kurt Cobain, Blind Melon's Shannon Hoon, and Sublime's Brad Nowell all suffering the perpetual sleep of such dangerous sedatives. And they are stories we hope to not hear repeated, as it's always a shame to lose creative minds. But let it be heard if The Carpet Frogs are those to sing it. Humans are, by nature, romantic about misfortune. I suppose this is due to our flightiness in so many ordinary arenas of daily life, that we rarely allow ourselves to enjoy life until tragedy occurs. Better be fiction to remind us before reality swings its massive guillotine and strikes upon the misperception of routine. The Carpet Frogs ends, well, as it began, spiraling into the unknowable chaos of existence, lashing against the emotional subterfuge inherent within each of us, screaming into a cauldron of the uncertain and unforgiving, listening to its echo rebound from the brass mold and perish into a vortex of silence. To do our part, then, would be to rebel against the gravity of silence and speak our mind, if but for a moment. With refreshing grace and courage Arlt swims against the backwater of a remembered art and offers us its chalice. From there, we can drink and, if we pause but for that second, offer a memorable smile to the face of imminent tragedy.