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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN num: 9781590200940
ISBN number: 1590200942
Label: Overlook TP
Manufacturer: Overlook TP
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 256
Printing Date: October 15, 2008
Publishing house: Overlook TP
Sale Popularity Level: 383733
Studio: Overlook TP
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Product Description:
Overlook is proud to put P. F. Kluge's classic Eddie and the Cruisers--the book that spawned the movies--in paperback for the very first time, so it can find a new generation of readers. With sparkling dialogue, superb plot and suspense that never flags this page-turner is the seminal novel of the 50's new music- rock-and-roll- and how it changed America.
Eddie and his Jersey-bred band, The Parkway Cruisers, were going places. With an album and a few minor hits to their credit the future seemed bright until Eddie died in a fiery car crash. Twenty years later a British rock band turns their old songs into monumental fresh hits.
With this comes a surge of interest in the surviving Cruisers and in a rumored cache of tapes that Eddie made before he died. That's when the killing starts.
User popularity level:
Rated by buyers -
The Eddie&the Cruisers and its sequel were movies I enjoy to death. They're rock-n-roll fantasies.
The novel, however, was darker and more cynical than the movies. Some of the characters were more tragic and Eddie was even larger than life than he was in the movies. However, he was also less successful in reaching his dreams...and his death is less ambiguous.
I love this novel.
Rated by buyers -
It doesn't really matter whether or not you've seen the two films or have heard John Cafferty's superb rendition of "On the Dark Side," on the radio before; neither experience is even close to actually reading the 1980 novel by author P.F. Kluge. The somber source material for the 1983 cult classic film starring Tom Berenger and Michael Pare could be called an American rock `n' fable, a murder mystery, a realistic (albeit fictional) memoir, and perhaps most poignantly, a ghost story. Kluge's novel very much defies conventional labels of what genre it should belong to, much like its little-seen hero, Eddie Wilson, vainly searches for a music uniquely his own vision (and ahead of its time) before destiny claims him.
While reading Kluge's articulate prose written in ex-Cruiser Frank Ridgeway's very first person point-of-view, I couldn't help but be reminded of Jack Kerouac's stream-of-consciousness "On the Road," narrative, which had a very similar feel to it. Much like the film adaptation (which occurs in 1981 with flashbacks to 1962-1963), Kluge's characters exist in a far more cynical, post-Watergate world than the exuberant, youthful generation of the late 1950's that Eddie Wilson so vibrantly personifies during the dawn of a new age. It seems prophetic that the defiant Eddie won't live to see the dramatic (and few for the better) changes in the lives he so greatly influenced before his apparent suicide in 1958. Even though he has limited `screen time' in the story, his somewhat ominous presence is very much felt throughout the novel.
Unlike actor Michael Pare's version of the character who becomes obsessed with 19th Century French poet Arthur Rimbaud's "A Season in Hell," this Eddie is fascinated by Walt Whitman and his seminal work, "Leaves of Grass." Suffice to say, I can see why changing Whitman to Rimbaud as Eddie's artistic idol makes perfect, logical sense for a movie (not to mention, its soundtrack). Yet, the literary Eddie Wilson has the same ultimate goal as his film counterpart; succinctly, as Pare angrily retorts to Matthew Laurence's Sal Amato, "I want something great .... something nobody's ever done before!" In this version, Eddie takes a month off in the summer of 1958 to work on a mysterious, experimental project with Wendell Newton in a secluded location at Lakehurst. A week after rejoining the Cruisers, a despondent Eddie evidently dies in a car accident going 90 miles an hour across a slick bridge, and the Original Cruisers, as a result, fade into history with him.
Nearly twenty years later, his ex-manager, Earl `Doc' Robbins recruits former Cruiser Frank Ridgeway's reluctant help to track down Eddie's long-lost Lakehurst tapes (assuming they even exist) after the Cruisers' music experiences an unexpected revival with that era's youth. Unlike the film, where the Cruisers are "just some guys from Jersey," as Sal Amato describes them; here, the Parkway Cruisers (yes, the Parkway Cruisers) seem perhaps more reminiscent of a Northeast version of the Eagles than the distinctive, vintage sound John Cafferty's Beaver Brown Band provides on the soundtrack.
As Frank tracks down the surviving members of the band (including Wendell Newton), it appears that someone else is desperate and willing enough to commit multiple murders to get his/her hands on the missing Lakehurst tapes first. In the end, it is left up to Frank to vindicate his old friends and come to terms with regrets over his own conflicted past. Is Eddie really still alive or not? Is he in fact the culprit? Or is it Sal Amato? Or "Doc" Robbins? Or maybe Joann Carlino? Or Kenny "Just Going Through a Phase" Hopkins? Or perhaps someone completely unexpected? Who's to say? As I stated before, Kluge's haunting novel is very much a ghost story (I'm not talking about the supernatural, per se), but the restless specter of Eddie Wilson lurks over each of the surviving Cruisers.
In his foreword, Native American author-poet Sherman Alexie provides an illuminating perspective about why Kluge's novel still matters today. No matter which generation you are from, the mature, nostalgic themes Kluge deftly explores are timeless in reminding readers how fateful decisions in one's youth inevitably have a way of coming full circle often when you least expect them to.
For those in need of an absorbing read, please consider discovering this novel. It's well worth taking a ride with the Cruisers.
Rated by buyers 
-
First, you can get this book from Kenyon College where the author teaches (Google it up), their college bookstore has reprinted it. The book was interesting to compare to the movie and I like the movie better, although the book is good and I coundn't put it down. Any cult fan of the movie should read it - lots of the movie dialog is directly from the book, but many of the plot details are quite different. Sal Amato and Doc are not so likeable in the book, but the Eddie Wilson of the book and the movie is the same mysterious, driven person. JoaAnn Carlino is definitely an attractive character in the book. I don't want to give too many of the plot differences away, since part of the fun of reading it is to see where it differs from the movie.
Rated by buyers -
I say that with exception of the music from the movie (John Cafferty and the Beaver Band did an exceptional job). First let me say that on the basis of plot, the book is superior to the movie. There was an endeavor to tie in some of the back plot in the second movie... Where the novel really shines is in the deep characterization of the secondary characters... Wendell's characer was so much more instrumental in the novel, as the only musician who was in on Eddie's secret experiment at Lakehurst. Since the novel is told in the very first person, Frank Ridgeway comes alive... If you can get ahold of this book, it will be worth whatever you have to go through to get it...
Rated by buyers -
Narrator Frank Ridgeway's story is that of any American adolescent, one of dreams and heroes slowly replaced by loss and friends. Eddie Wilson is the tragic visionary, the Springsteen + James Dean character that remains to this day the very heart of the American dream. In the bonds between these brothers of purpose, we find ourselves and our national heritage.
Words & music still need each other. Thought & spirit govern our course through life.
The author, the Wordman himself, lives & teaches. His book is available in a special paperback edition with a new post-movie afterword. Find him & you'll find this book. It's well worth the effort.
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