Customer Reviews

The Poet in Exile

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(10)

 

 

I expected this book to be a self-indulgent attempt by Manzarek to fulfill what is probably a huge fantasy for him. No problem, I wanted a little indulgence myself. But this book goes far overboard into nonstop self-congratulations.

Rather than simply embrace the fun notion that Morrison is still alive, Manzarek has Morrison apologize (over and over) for how poorly he treated the other band members while constantly giving them credit for making him the icon that he was. Manzarek even has Morrison compliment the albums that The Doors produced after his departure. It's actually a bit embarassing to read such a transparent attempt to assure the world that the rest of the band was worthy of Jim Morrison.

Poet in Exile reads like a thearpy journal masked as fiction. It would seem that Ray manzarek is working out unresolved issues with Jim Morrison's death. Sadly it was a totally predictable book

Being a life long doors fan I was greatly looking forward to reading this book. It was a total disappointment. The text is self indulgent and overly emotional to the point where it bores the reader. How the characters parallel those of the Doors is enough to enrage a true Doors fan and the events are totally unbelieveable. Ray Manzarek is a very talented musician and should stick with what he knows.

This book is embarrasingly bad. It reads like a highschool fanzine/blog. Perhaps that is the intention? Do we really need to be TOLD who Audubon was or have yoga positions and zen concepts explained to us like a child? Condescending and stupid. Too bad he didn't describe more incidents when Jim hurt people. That would have at least been interesting. I think the DRUMMER and the KEYBOARDIST have written enough, but Ka-ching goes the cash register, breakin on through to the consumer side...

I bought this book and read it within 2 days (which is quite rare for me!). I am a great Doors/Jim Morrison fan and I figured a fictionalized book written by a Doors member would be refreshing! It is too! Although all the names have been changed, you can clearly see who represents who in this book (Jim...Jordan, Ray...Roy, Pamela...Kimberly, etc.). I wanted to read it probably for the same reason Ray M decided to write it; to keep the dream of Jim alive! To give a little hope and wishful thinking to those who want Jim to be alive. It is clear however, in my eyes, that Ray viewed Jim as a 'hateful drunk' at times and basically thought Pamela was no good for him (due to her supposed excessive heroin use). But he also majorly stresses how he misses Jim terribly, how he loved Jim and cared for him, and how Jim truely did love Pamela! It's clearly a fictionalized book written by a very good friend of Jim's who wishes (like the rest of us) that Jim was still around. And if Jim was still around, how he could have turned his life around to work for the best! But let me tell you, this is a very spiritual book (as was Jim) and if you are not interested in someone getting in touch with their true inner-self by means of spiritual journeys, etc. then you might not like it as well as I did. It's a little on the wishful thinking side but if you are a Morrison fan, then it will probably give you a nice, refreshing thought of....could it be more than fiction???

On a Halloween night about thirteen years ago, I was listening to a radio program with the psychic Kenny Kingston. He was doing on-the-air readings. Someone called up and said (rather sarcastically, I might add), "Hey, Kenny...why don't you contact the spirit of Jim Morrison..."
In a very matter-of-fact tone, Kenny Kingston replied, "You can't contact the spirit of a person who's not even dead..."

Silence.

Wooly Bumps.

More Silence.

Is Jim Morrison dead? Is he hiding out somewhere? These are questions that Ray Manzarek addresses in the book, The Poet In Exile. I met Ray Manzarek and had a ten minute conversation with him about 10 years ago. Nice man. Very nice man. He's not much of a storyteller and I really think he wants to be, but he's a heckuva nice guy.

Lemme tell you about an experience I had about 20 years ago. I was at the Roxy in Los Angeles and I went there to see a Doors cover band, Wild Child. There was this guy sitting there who looked like Jim Morrison would've looked had he lived to become middle aged. He had short, graying hair and a neatly trimmed goatee and he was dressed in a nice shirt and pants and had a very intense look in his eye. He almost looked kind of nervous being there. I mentioned to my friend, "Hey, who does that guy look like to you?" Without missing a beat, he thought the same thing I did.

It's time for the Doors cover band to hit the stage. The drum crack signaling Light My Fire fills the room and the middle-aged, Jim Morrison lookalike finishes his drink and walks away looking hurt and wounded.

What the???

True story. It still sends chills up my spine.

Is Jim Morrison still alive? Is he hiding out? Is he in exhile? I don't really know and this book doesn't really offer any clear answers. If I was a cynic, I'd tell Ray to stop drinking the bong water, but I don't know. I think Ray really wants him to be alive, but all of us Doors fans want that.

Still after all that, maybe "Jimbo" is right where he needs to be; in the hearts and in the souls of all he touched with his magic. In that case, being physically alive isn't the important thing, knowing that his legacy lives on, is.

Not a horrible book...not a good book...

Peace and Blessings, children of Light...

A Poet in Exile - by Ray Manzarek

Ray Manzarek, electrifying keyboardist of The Doors, takes you on a tour of the Seychelles Islands (sp?) and the pysche of music legend "Jordan" in this fictional story that some would say is an account of a "what if" situation of Jim Morrison possibly faking his death.

The story is about how the lead character "Roy" finds "Jordan" on a small island of the east coast of Africa and talks with him about his faked death and how he has overcome his demons.

This is the entire book, so don't feel that I'm giving away anything.

The writing, overall, is too much touchy-feely story telling which tends to lose the reader. There is hardly, if any at all, action that can grip a reader's senses and most of the dialogue feels pretentious and self-rigtheous (sp?).

You tend to think that the reason that this book was published was that Manzarek felt enough pressure, or finally gave in to what most fans of the Doors would love to dream about: the staged death of Jim Morrison. And because of his name, a book written as badly as this one could get published simply because of that.

I am a fan of the Doors and all classic rock music and I have sometimes dreamt about the possibility of certain stars actually still alive.

But I guess some things are better left unsaid.

As a life-long Doors fan, I do wish this story were true. It would be nice to dream that "he got away". What an adventure that would be.

I liked Mr. Manzarek's writing style and his educated vocabulary. The story had me spell-bound. His use of details was so amazing. I loved how he weaved true band experiences into his fiction.

Ray Manzarek on KIND OF BLUE: "Right before I moved to California, in 1960, I used to listen to a radio station in Chicago that played jazz at night, and that's when I heard KIND OF BLUE. Miles playing those minimalist melodies and Bill Evans on piano---God, it's like Zen music. It shows how good those cats were. They recorded it in two days, but they'd been preparing all their lives for that moment. And it was the first time that a mysterioso quality had been brought to jazz. I locked onto that immediately; Doors music comes from this emotion. RIDERS ON THE STORM is very much like SO WHAT: same dark mood but with a cool, swinging quality. The modulations on this album are like a small orgasm. It's transcendental. Music is a divine act in which we most closely approach God---outside the LSD experience, in which you realize that you and God are one. But making music is such a spiritual act, because it's totally ephemeral. Thank God for recording devices; otherwise, we'd never be talking about this incredible moment that those gentlemen had in that studio."

ROLLING STONE magazine solicited Ray's commentary about his favorite record and the above-quoted disquisition is superior to the entirety of THE POET IN EXILE. Ray's fic is far & away the worst fic ever penned by a psychedelic organist. But that's only because David Cohen (of Country Joe & The Fish) still hasn't checked in fic-wise. (Come on, Dave. Give it yer worst shot.)

Ray's memoir posited a character named Jimbo. Jim's drunken redneck-lout alter-ego. But Ray forgot to mention the time that Jimbo grabbed Ray's cherished copy of KIND OF BLUE and proceeded to stomp on it. So what does Ray do in this roman-a-clef what-if scenario of a fic? He overcompensates for Jimbo by transmogrifying Jim into a warm & fuzzy New Age Pollyanna. And the result is too hideously icky to contemplate.

Ray has such a terminal case of the cutes that he even has Jim's 2 hypothetical children speaking the same line simultaneously: "'How do you do, Monsieur Ray', they said in unison, lilting English and French together." (You know---just like those 2 repulsive identical-twin girls in WILD STRAWBERRIES.) Or how about the adorable little tyke-mystic in the Led Zeppelin t-shirt: "An angel from Zeppelin's HOUSES OF THE HOLY had come to save me." Excuse me while I vomit myself hollow.

Ray's ultimate sin here is sheer laziness. Ray lazily projected his own personality when it came to creating Morrison Mark II. When what he should've done was to extrapolate a Nouveau-Jim that's based on Old-Jim.

BUY THIS BOOK!!!

I sat down and could not stop turning the pages, I read this book in 2 days and wanted more! Makes you think about all the rumors that have floated around for all these years about Jim Morrison and now you hear "the poet" tell his story from and older and more humbled perspective, and who better of a person to find his new mature perspective than a bandmate. Overall this is a great book that does what a book should do take you on a journey even if the journey is fictional ...or is it... J