The Last Rock Star Book: Or Liz Phair, a Rant [Paperback]

Camden Joy (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 1998

Camden Joy'ss hero is writing a quickie bio of rock star Liz Phair, but increasingly finds himself recounting his own troubled life. His ex-girlfriend (possibly Brian Jones's illegitimate daughter); Liz Phair (whom he'ss never met); and a mystery girl in an old photo all start to blur together. Joy'ss novel is a witty and cogent meditation on celebrity and obsession.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Verse Chorus debuts with a breathless hybrid of fictional autobiography and pop-culture critique that will appeal to literary rockers and cynical Gen-Xers. Joy earned underground notoriety as a "guerrilla" writer scribbling limited-edition pamphlets and passionate posters about various cult bands. His first novel traces the downward spiral of a morally suspect slacker named... Camden Joy. After an unwanted breakup with his girlfriend, the fictional Camden is hired by a schlock publisher to write a quickie bio of Liz Phair, the real-life artist who pioneered a 1990s brand of feminist rock and has been lying low after the release of two acclaimed albums. Camden is daunted by the assignment, but the offer comes at a time when he's down and out. So, acting out of desperate bravado, Camden steals his landlady's car and journeys to Chicago to confront Phair and a host of personal demons. Employing a freewheeling narrative style, Joy relates his ode to squandered youth and perfect pop songs in a flurry of words and excited digressions. Some of the flashbacks to an adolescence suffused with rock and roll and fizzled gestures of rebellion are truly funny, but the indulgent musings on identity, fame and art shed more heat than light. Joy emerges as a spectacularly energetic writer?and as a novelist who hasn't yet learned to shape the persistent buzzings of too many media echoes.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"The Last Rock Star Book traces the downward spiral of a morally suspect slacker, also named Camden Joy. Following an unwanted break-up with his girlfriend, the lovably dizzy Shaleese (who believes her father was Rolling Stones bad-boy Brian Jones), Camden is hired by schlock publisher Gabriel Snell to write a quickie "where is she now?" bio of Phair.... Daunted both by the assignment and his going-nowhere life in Iowa--vividly portrayed in hilarious yet poignant flashback scenes of teenage sex, drugs, rock and roll, and petty crime--Camden grows increasingly obsessed with Phair's music. Acting out of desperate bravado, Camden steals his landlady's car and journeys to Chicago to confront Phair and his own personal demons. [Joy's] casually complex musings on identity, fame, and art are fueled by the visceral kick and emotional wallop of great rock music." --Detour Magazine, September 1998

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Product Details

• Paperback: 212 pages
• Publisher: Verse Chorus Press; 1st edition (September 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1891241079
• ISBN-13: 978-1891241079
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.4 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,121,072 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant - a classic for this generation., January 2, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Last Rock Star Book: Or Liz Phair, a Rant (Paperback)

Camden eloquently expresses the anger and frustration felt by so many of us today regarding the "genericized" musical industry and the increasing lack of intelligent musical taste. The ultimate symptom of the musical malaise is the pervasive hero worship of _rock_stars_themselves_ in the absence of quality music to adore. In parallel with Camden's disgust with the state of music today there is a clear lingering feeling of his love of rock and roll. I can empathize completely with this dilemma.

This book certainly displays a stark atmosphere of fatalism, but it does so in an unthreatening fashion -- we accept with little emotion that life is not going to be a fairy tale for Camden, and we are not called by his writing to stand up and cheer for a happy ending (although human nature cannot but hope for one). Isn't this an accurate reflection of the cautious and nearly fatalist attitude of many of our youth today?

One great surprise for me is that imbedded within Camden's rather informal dialogue are nuggets of incredible poetry. For example, "Outside the window, stick-bare windswept trees of winter spoke of witch trials". I would love to see Camden further explore his obvious potential for poetic prose in future works.

Camden Joy is a voice that I hope we continue to hear in modern literature. Buy this book.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Complicated but simple novel, June 25, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Last Rock Star Book: Or Liz Phair, a Rant (Paperback)

Camden Joy has written a minor masterpiece here called "The Last Rock Star Book." Joy is the main character of his novel (mostly likely not "really" him), and his past is at times a little cloudy from huffing too much as a teen. But the book is unpredictable. The direction the book takes you lead me to believe that Liz Phair is the love child of Brian Jones (an explanation for the seeming links made between "Exile in Guyville" and post-Brian Jones Stones' masterpiece "Exile on Main Street"?), but you can't be sure. The idea was great, and his prose was simple articulate and at times poetic. The narrator is very likeable at times, but ultimately unlikable. The ending was anticlimatic, but still carried out the authors revisionistic aims.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Joy takes you along on his trip..., January 29, 2001

By 

Amy Krug "amykk25" (Centerville, OH United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Last Rock Star Book: Or Liz Phair, a Rant (Paperback)

"The Last Rock Star Book or: Liz Phair, a Rant" alternates between funny and disturbing, deep and superficial. Though I bought it because I'm a Liz Phair fan, the emphasis should really be on "Rant" rather than Phair. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Joy adequately captures the essense of teenage (or twenty-something, or thirty-something) rebellion, and the allure of sex, drugs & rock n' roll. He takes you along as he probes the recesses of his mind & memory, while sniffing glue and chatting with his pocket tape recorder. At worst confusing and at best intriguing, this is a good read for the original MTV generation.