Jack Frusciante Has Left the Band: A Love Story- with Rock 'n' Roll - Softcover

Brizzi, Enrico

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0802135218 ISBN 13: 9780802135216

Publisher: Grove Press, 1997

Synopsis

Alex D. is on the verge of just about everything and consumed by a restless, unanswered longing that rebels against jumping through the hoops of school. Staring down the tunnel to a mundane adulthood, he is appalled by the banality and overwhelming predictability of it all: teachers, parents, and above all his classmates - the seething masses of dutiful zombies and sistren of the Evervirgin Sorority. A bicycle bandit with a DeNiro smile, Alex sports a homemade buzzcut, ditches school to drink and trade stories with his posse of delinquents and rogues, and chases away the blues by assailing his eardrums with the Clash. He shares a brief friendship with the privileged, semi-degenerate Martino, who seems to have mastered the devil-may-care stance Alex covets - until he's busted for drugs. And then comes the sudden entrance of Aidi, who seems to instantly understand, complement, and challenge him. A hundred letters and conversations later, she is magnificent, amazing, irreplaceable ... and leaving for a year in America at the end of the summer.

About this title

Review:

The setting: Bologna, Italy, under a sky "as eloquent as a block of cast iron." The hero: Alex, a bright and bored 18-year-old. The genre: coming of age. Alex, anticipating a future of bun-numbing, bourgeoisie-induced boredom and hopelessly in love, takes up with the briskly degenerate--albeit empathic--Martino. Drinking, drugging, and rock-and-roll fill the void left, or created, by Alex's realization of the banality of existence. Enrico Brizzi writes with an insider's view of life in the band--he himself played in a rock band before he was thrown out for bad conduct. What lifts Jack Frusciante Has Left the Band above the more predictable aspects of the coming-of-age story is its tone: energetic and crackling with irony. The author, already a sensation at 22, has become one of Italy's biggest sellers. With the easy, slangy conversational style of The Catcher in the Rye, Brizzi's second novel paints an endearing picture of contemporary youth outrageously scrambling for meaning.

Language Notes:

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: Italian

About this edition

• Publisher: Grove Press
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0802135218
• ISBN 13: 9780802135216
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 192