Sound on Sound [Hardcover]

Christopher Sorrentino (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1995

This inventive first novel deflates the same myths of rock and roll that it glorifies in a vivid exploration of pop culture and the shattered society that emerged from the 1980s.

Hi-Fi, a third-rate New York bar band, plays another in a desultory series of low-paying gigs as Reagan's inaugural speech drones from a TV in the background. Equipment falters, band members flex their egos, and the regular crowd shifts from boredom to borderline violence. What begins as an inauspicious account of a typical evening at a nightclub soon gives way to a stupefying catalog of trivia about Hi-Fi, the band with the "suburb sound and the suburb feel."

A kaleidoscopic series of narrative tracks duplicate the layered effect of the music recording process as a virtuosic "solo" by a glibly omniscient but contemptuous "author" faces off with the wildly paradoxical testimony of nine different witnesses to the band's infamous affairs. Hi-Fi's tepid beginnings on Manhattan's Lower East Side lead to a suspect rise to fame, baffling a would-be biographer as he looks back from his 1990s vantage point.

Gradually the events of the Inauguration Night performance expose varying degrees of madness, greed, violence and despairan omen of the era to come. By turns reverently faithful to and highly parodic of both rock and roll and literary modernism, Sound on Sound investigates the cynical business of creating myths and hype, cracking the bullet-proof glass of our media-generated culture.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this ambitious first novel, which is structured as a multilayered recording session, the concept behind the plot is flawed, but the story is flawlessly executed. Hi-Fi is a not-yet-famous rock band playing a fateful gig at a seedy New York bar called Cheaters on the night of Ronald Reagan's first inauguration in 1981. From the safety of the '90s, hack writer and Hi-Fi aficionado Paul Marzio attempts to puzzle out the events of that evening, after which Hi-Fi rose to a possibly tainted prominence. The first iteration of "what happened" is given without dialogue or judicious description, as if it were the rhythm track. The conceit is nice, but the actual execution of it makes the first 25 pages of the book, which read like a screenplay synopsis, drab and uninteresting. Luckily, the section is followed by a series "overdubs," which include: a list of items numbered like exhibits at a trial; a "solo" by our author, Paul; and the conflicting accounts of various Hi-Fi hangers-on and former girlfriends, who attended Cheaters that evening. In the final section, Marzio conducts interviews with the now-famous bandmembers, but nothing produces a clear solution to the narrative puzzle. Sorrentino gets away with a lot through sheer virtuosity. After the slow first layer, he completes the formal exercise he's set for himself with great vigor, and his writing, when he paints a scene, is funny, perceptive and dead-on the satirical mark.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"Flawlessly executed. . . . funny, perceptive and dead-on the satirical mark." -- Publishers Weekly 3-6-95

"Living proof that literary genes can be passed from father to son." -- Michael Perkins 5-1-95

"Sorrentino has used the rock book format (and his superbly pompous 'multitrack' device) as a vehicle for a brilliant and complex novel about remembered truths and modern ennui. . . . The close of 'Foundation' has a crisp, cinematic grace, and the final 'Playback' crumbles the book's carefully wrought tension with delicious resolve." -- Los Angeles Reader 4-14-95

"This terrific first novel by Gil's kid is structured after the recording technique of 'laying tracks.' . . . Sorrentino is contemptuous of his sources, in love with their stupid appeal, and utterly transcendent to them." -- Curtis White, Exquisite Corpse

"Writers like Christopher Sorrentino bring us back to the pleasures of reading. And there is a lot of intelligent material to chew on here. This book works like a hypertext; the chapters can be read in any order. So in that way it's totally contemporary while continuing to converse with Modernism." -- American Book Review Dec-Jan 95-96

Product Details

• Hardcover: 210 pages
• Publisher: Dalkey Archive Pr; 1st edition (May 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1564780732
• ISBN-13: 978-1564780737
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.8 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,125,259 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars I'm taking it on faith., May 7, 2001

By 

Tom Matthews (Chicago) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sound on Sound (Hardcover)

I was totally involved in NYC scene pre-1980 (after that I was in Japan for a while) so judging from what I know about what went on there after what was if I do say so myself the golden age of NYC rock (ca. 1974-79), this book seems pretty accurate in its depiction of a crummy third rate band going through the motions. That's just the story part. The book is told in this fantastic, difficult to describe way. Very parsed, if that's the right word. Each section corresponds to a track on a multi-track tape, "Basic Rhythm," "Vocals," "Solo," etc. Cool, if a little confusing. You're never sure what happened. Very unlinear and kind of cool and abundant in footnotes and self-referential asides way way before Wallace or Eggers or those guys. Definitely a must-read--even if you hate its guts, which about two people I've told about it ended up doing.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars What a sad and lonely little book., April 14, 2005

By 

Parsippany Weatherbee "Tripping Lightly" (San Francisco) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Sound on Sound (Hardcover)

"Only one left in stock!" Each time I visit this lonely, windswept page I notice that superfluous legend, and I think to myself, "My! No one's bought that last copy yet." It must be a year or two since it first appeared here, like a sign advising of the maximum legal occupancy of a room in some Last Man on Earth movie. How ironic!, you're supposed to think. But Amazon adds insult to injury by advising, "Order soon (more on the way)." Oh, Amazon! Must you rub it in? We all know that nobody wants Christopher Sorrentino's little book, except maybe his mother. Only one left in stock! Why not just say, "We're almost out of this bomb! It's so insignificant it's not even worth paying the parcel post rate to return it to the publisher! We just keep it around, put hot things on it when we're sitting around the break room table having lunch, me, Terry, Glenn, Little Chris, Mike--the whole shipping room gang knows which books you can and cannot use as a trivet. Can't: Jonathan Safran Foer. Can: Curtis White. Can't: Dave Eggers. Can: Alex Shakar. Can't: Rick Moody. Well, OK, maybe it's OK to serve piping hot Chef Boy-Ar-Dee Ravioli off a copy of PURPLE AMERICA." Poor SOUND ON SOUND. I think it must be the loneliest book at Amazon. Here's ESTUARINE AND MARINE BIVALVE MOLLUSK CULTURE, by Winston Menzel. That's ranked around 1,300,000th--about 700,000 ahead of SOUND ON SOUND. Is SOUND ON SOUND really more boring than a book that retails for $359 and begins, "The soft-shell clam Mya arenaria (Linnaeus) (family Myidae; common names: soft-shell clam, long-necked clam, nannynose, sand gaper, steamer clam) has an elongate, elliptical shell (Figure 1), with a large siphonal gape at the elongate posterior end and a small gape anteriorly." And how about XYLEM STRUCTURE AND THE ASCENT OF SAP, by Melvin T. Tyree. Sounds like a Vollmann title, almost. It begins, "The development of upright land plants depended on the development of a water conducting system." Everyone knows that. Rank? About 800,000th--1.2 million ahead of SOUND ON SOUND.  How about intubation? Here's COMMUNICATION AND SWALLOWING MANAGEMENT OF TRACHEOSTOMIZED AND VENTILATOR DEPENDENT ADULTS. No quote, but the front matter promises to avoid a "cook book" approach, thank goodness. Also ranked around 800,000th. Is there nothing poor, poor SOUND ON SOUND can outsell? I don't understand it. Let me look.....................................................................................Ah! Jerome Charyn's DEATH OF A TANGO KING (#2,337.737). Of course, Jerome Charyn has written about forty-five books, so even his most avid readers might be forgiven for overlooking a title here and there. Sorry, lonely SOUND ON SOUND. You're still the champ.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Talented writer, but bad book, January 28, 2008

By 

Adam Brawerman (Chicago, IL) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Sound on Sound (Hardcover)

This book is about a band that could never make it in the rock scene in NY (or did they?), and the author tirelessly rips them appart. I had many problems with this book. Number one, isn't it a little easy to rip on a band that never made it. It's a little like picking on the smallest kid in school. It's easy, but why bother. Second, Sorrentino writes the book in a strange and creative structure. But, a cool structure doesn't make up for a dull story. Most of the book is about one night when the band just plays at a club. Pulp Fiction wasn't a good movie just because it had an interesting structure, it was an interesting story to begin with.

The worst chapter is Dub 3 (Vocals) where every character is asked the same three questions. Again, these are not interesting questions, or answers. It's just people rambling. I know some people liked it, and I thought I would like it too, but in the end it just sounds like a talented writer with no direction or motivation.