THE GRAMMAR OF ROCK: ART AND ARTLESSNESS

National Book Award nominee, critic and one of America's least compromising satirists, Alexander Theroux takes a comprehensive look at the colorful language of pop lyrics and the realm of rock music in general in The Grammar of Rock. With his usual encyclopedic insights into the state of the modern lyric, Theroux focuses on the state of language - the power of words and the nature of syntax - in the prose The Grammar of Rock. He analyzes its assaults on listeners' impulses by investigating singers' styles, pondering lunacies in lyrics, and deconstructing the nature of diction and presentation in the language. This is that rare book that positively evaluates the very nature of a pop song, and why one over another has an effect on the listener.

Alexander Theroux is an award-winning novelist, poet, and teacher whose prose works include Laura Warholic or, The Sexual Intellectual, Estonia, and the two artist monographs The Strange Case of Edward Gorey and The Enigma of Al Capp. His novel Darconville’s Cat was chosen by Anthony Burgess as one of the 99 greatest post-war novels. He lives in Massachusetts with his wife and children.