The Fine Wisdom and Perfect Teachings of the Kings of Rock and Roll - by Mark Edmundson (Paperback)

About the Book

"Hilarious, harrowing, and ultimately inspiring.... Truly, there is something arresting and wonderful on every page." -- Michael Pollan

"With sentences that sometimes astonish" (Matthew Crawford, author of Shop Class as Soulcraft), celebrated cultural critic Mark Edmundson has written a hip and hilarious coming-of-age memoir about one man's miscues and false starts as he enters the world after college. Through exhilarating adventures, he attempts to answer the timeless question of who he is, while contemplating what role music, love, work, drugs, money, and books will play in his life.

Book Synopsis

"Hilarious, harrowing, and ultimately inspiring.... Truly, there is something arresting and wonderful on every page."
-- Michael Pollan

"With sentences that sometimes astonish" (Matthew Crawford, author of Shop Class as Soulcraft), celebrated cultural critic Mark Edmundson has written a hip and hilarious coming-of-age memoir about one man's miscues and false starts as he enters the world after college. Through exhilarating adventures, he attempts to answer the timeless question of who he is, while contemplating what role music, love, work, drugs, money, and books will play in his life.

From the Back Cover

After graduating from college in 1974, Mark Edmundson leaves Vermont to seek his destiny--a quest he knows involves rock and roll and America's high court of mischief and ambition, New York City. Shepherded by a carousing, Marx-quoting friend, he moves into a grungy apartment and embarks on a dream career lugging amps for rock's biggest stars: the Grateful Dead, Pink Floyd, and the Allman Brothers.

But as time wears on, Edmundson finds himself at odds with life in his adopted city and drifts through a regimen of late-night cab driving and radical politics, increasingly detached from the hopes he nursed back in school. Prodded and enlightened along the way by a cast of rogue mentors--his "Kings (and Queens) of Rock and Roll"--Edmundson checks out of New York and careens across the country in search of the elusive "it" the perfect vocation, his slightly crazy, ideal way of life.

Review Quotes

"Not your typical rock tell-all. . . . An entertaining coming-of-age story that cloaks a social critique of post-Sixties USA." -- Rolling Stone (3 1/2 stars)

"A near-perfect memoir.... In this erudite, coming-of-age riot, the author deftly navigates the purgatorial rites of passage between university and professional life, developing insightful social critiques and candid self-evaluations along the way.... [Edmundson is] an honest, poetic and hilariously entertaining narrator." -- Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"Everything you want a coming-of-age book to be: hilarious, harrowing, and ultimately inspiring. . . . Brims with sparkling observations about everything from drugs, sex and rock and roll to movies, career, and friendship. Truly, there is something arresting and wonderful on every page." -- Michael Pollan, author of Food Rules: An Eater's Manual and The Omnivore's Dilemma

"A compelling and accomplished memoir recounting the dissolution of the sixties and the beginning of the modern, more cynical era that followed. . . Candidly describes Mark Edmundson's journey as a lost twenty-something seeking meaning through sex, drugs, Marxism, rock & roll, and ultimately, teaching." -- Philipp Meyer, author of American Rust

"Edmundson doesn't just chronicle, he channels, the epoch of rock.... He makes us feel its hopes; its confusions; its genuine revelations.... Concert security dude, cabbie, bouncer: these jobs provide him critical lenses on a succession of cultural moments, and on the never-ending task of becoming an adult." -- Matthew Crawford, author of Shop Class as Soulcraft