The Hunger Bone: Rock & Roll Stories [Paperback]

Debra Marquart (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 2001 | Series: Headwaters Series (Book 2)

Short stories and short-short stories about traveling rock musicians that focus on the unseen, less than glamorous side of touring as a struggling rock band—the personal tolls, the grueling poverty, the gnawing hunger for fame, and the small and unlikely moments of redemption. These characters are slowly realizing that their dreams are slipping away, that age and hard living have worn them down, that their funky, rootless, rock & roll lives have not taken on the grandeur they’d envisioned.
Debra Marquart toured with several rock and heavy metal bands during the 1970s and 1980s. She previously published a book of poetry,Everything’s a Verb(New Rivers Press, 1995), and currently teaches creative writing at Iowa State University. She is the poetry editor of theFlyway Literary Review.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Marquart sang with heavy metal bands in the '70s, and her 21 short stories testify to the haggard after-effects of the rock 'n' roll life. In "Three Mile Limit," Nina, the narrator, is coping with her repressed sexual feelings for her guitarist, TroyDwho, much to her chagrin, has just married a very middle-class girl. When Nina analyzes her own profile, it captures the divided nature of her character and of Marquart's collection overall: "On the left, my nose turned up in a slight pug... making me look like everybody's cute kid sister. But on the right side, my nose ran straighter.... It made me look aloof, like a woman who could demand things and expect to get them." In "The Half Life of the Note," Madison, who is living with her three kids on food stamps and steals clothes in futile preparation for an imaginary future career as a singer, pours out her hopes and dreams to houseguest Kinky Salazar, a successful, aging rocker. In the title story, Sal spends part of his time touring with his band and part selling tombstones. After six months in the tombstone business, however, he's never clinched a sale. This story tells about his last failureDwhich is also a liberation. While Marquart's prose is careful and clean, it seems a little too pale and well-mannered for its subject. The path to wisdom in rock and roll is designed to wind through excess; here, it more often detours into exhaustion. But Marquart knows her characters and their world inside out, and musicians will find much to identify with in her stories. (Jan.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From the Publisher

The Hunger Bone: Rock & Roll Stories won the 1998 Capricorn Fiction Award, sponsored by the Westside Y in NYC, and the 1999 Headwaters Award.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 197 pages
• Publisher: New Rivers Press; 1st edition (January 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0898232090
• ISBN-13: 978-0898232097
• Product Dimensions: 7 x 5 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,210,096 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Debra Marquart is a professor of English in the MFA Program in Creative Writing & Environment at Iowa State University and an affiliated faculty member with the Stonecoast Low-Residency MFA Program at University of Southern Maine. A performance poet, Marquart is the author of two poetry collections: Everything's a Verb (New Rivers Press, 1995) and From Sweetness (Pearl Editions, 2002).

In the 1970s and '80s, Marquart was a touring road musician with rock and heavy metal bands. Her collection of short stories, The Hunger Bone: Rock & Roll Stories (New Rivers Press, 2001) draws from her experiences as a female road musician. Marquart continues to perform with a jazz-poetry rhythm & blues project, The Bone People, with whom she released two CDs: Orange Parade (acoustic rock); and A Regular Dervish (jazz-poetry).

Marquart's work has received a 2008 Prose Literature Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Pushcart Prize, the John Guyon Nonfiction Award (Crab Orchard Review), the Mid-American Review Nonfiction Award, The Headwater's Prize from New Rivers Press, the Minnesota Voices Award, the Pearl Poetry Award (Pearl Editions), the Shelby Foote Prize for the Essay from the Faulkner Society.

Marquart's memoir, The Horizontal World: Growing Up Wild in the Middle of Nowhere received the 2007 PEN USA Creative Nonfiction Award, the Elle Lettres Award from Elle Magazine, and a New York Times "Editors' Choice" commendation. She is currently at work on three books: a novel set in Greece titled, Among the Ruins; a roots-travel memoir about her family's migrations through Ukraine, Russia and Siberia, titled Somewhere Else This Time Tomorrow: On Geographical Flight & Cultural Amnesia; and a poetry collection, titled, To Break Into Blossom.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Elegant and Gritty at the same time, December 1, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: The Hunger Bone: Rock & Roll Stories (Paperback)

The Hunger Bone is a wonderful collection of short stories strung together with shorter stories, prose poems, to give the collection texture and contribute to the creation of a world -- the world of travelling rock and roll musicians. The characters are beautifully drawn, and the stories reveal the thrills and trials of such a life. There's lots of humor here, and cynical glimpses of the audience's behavior on a dance floor when energy is high and inhibitions are low. We see the economic struggles of the musicians, their loyalties to each other, and points when those loyalties break down. The details are clear and ring true, and the tales are moving. Any lover of rock and roll would love this book. It's great. The elegant prose is so beautiful -- musical, in fact.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Accidents! Fights! Abortions! Yeah!, May 6, 2006

By 

Richard Schaan - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Hunger Bone: Rock & Roll Stories (Paperback)

This review is a response to Sara Brady's review, titled "This writer will never make any money!". While it's true that the stories in this collection lack life and death climaxes, I completely disagree with her statement that "Something needs to happen in a story--an abortion, a fight, an accident--SOMETHING." Many great stories revolve around the idea that "something" could happen, or that "something" has already happened.

If she is saying that in order to "make money" the author should start including more action into her work, she may be right, but perhaps the reviewer should consider the notion that an author sometimes believes so strongly in his/her style that changing it in order to please just enough morons to get rich is out of the question.

For those of you who enjoy good writing and a peek into a subculture that is rarely exposed, I recommend this book. Anyone who has ever been involved in the small time music scene should pick this up because it gracefully sheds a little light into the dark corners where most of the musicians in this country are piled atop one another, waiting and working their ass off for a break.

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very real, humorous, and engaging, January 11, 2001

By 

Ryan Sheeler - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Hunger Bone: Rock & Roll Stories (Paperback)

I spent more than 5 years slogging it out in a bar band myself, so I can identify with this book. Debra Marquart writes from such a unique perspective that makes this book a very entertaining read indeed.

I think that the average reader is in for a treat with this book. However, it really helps if you have been in a band, have seen This is Spinal Tap more than 5 times, and are on a first-name basis with the employees of your favorite local guitar shop!

The stories in here really hit home for me. And I got a really good laugh out of it too. The characterizations are dead-on accurate.