The Fine Wisdom and Perfect Teachings of the Kings of Rock and Roll: A Memoir

by Mark Edmundson

Book Overview

"Hilarious, harrowing, and ultimately inspiring.... Truly, there is something arresting and wonderful on every page." -- Michael Pollan "With sentences that sometimes astonish" (Matthew Crawford,... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0061713473
• ISBN13: 9780061713477
• Release Date: May 2010
• Publisher: Harper
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.5" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

joyous

I've always admired the memoirs that dare to look back with honesty and humor on the life of the writer, that dare to say something about the time in which the author came of age. Edmundson's book is wonderful: big-hearted, often laugh-out-loud funny, beautifully written. But there's something else about it that I think will appeal to readers - its lack of ego, its transparency, its maturity. Mark Edumundson's done his share of living, and of thinking about that living, and now, in the fullness of time, has written a book about it. And whether you grew up in the 60's and 70's or not, if you care about music, if you care about the messy, wonderful business of finding your way in this world, you'll want to read this.

The Wit, Wisdom and Erudition of Mark Edmundson

I first discovered Mark Edmundson through his earlier memoir, TEACHER - ONE WHO MADE THE DIFFERENCE, and have been gobbling up his books as soon as he produces them, ever since. (WHY READ? and THE DEATH OF SIGMUND FREUD I consider masterpieces). Only more remarkable than Edmundson's eloquent and evocative prose is the astonishing range of his interests, from culture to pop culture, from history to introspection, from movies to poetry, from philosophy to music - Edmundson writes gracefully yet passionately about all. He is observant, he is tolerant and he is funny. His latest book, a memoir entitled The Fine Wisdom and Perfect Teachings of Rock and Roll, is one of the most enjoyable - and moving - books of its kind I have ever read. Edmundson describes with candor and courage, his own growing up, his on-going search for a life with meaning and all the various paths he took (and is still taking) to get him to his elusive destination. I strongly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys reading, people and life.

Unsentimental, intelligent, even wise

I love The Fine Wisdom; it's an impressively intelligent and unsentimental book about class and character and calling and fate (especially, for me, class). Here are several of my favorite passages from this extremely quotable and wise memoir: For I thought of myself as something of a quester, perhaps not altogether unlike any young man or woman setting off into the world. As I liked to put it to myself, keeping matters aptly vague so as to allow for the ministrations of good fortune in all forms, I was looking for _it_. What was _it_? I did not know for certain. I had no concrete vision of _it_'s ultimate form. That was part of the beauty. _It_ was the thing in life that I was tooled for and set to do and to be: _it_ was the way of living in the world that would give me spiritual and intellectual and--who knows?--maybe erotic satisfaction, too. My dreams were coming at me. Why not say it? In some part of my soul, I wanted to be a writer/magician/visionary/fortune-and-misfortune teller. I wanted to get a hand on the Zeitgeist's rump. Maybe both hands, maybe ride. My fellow grads were going to trot off to law school and publishing houses and PhD programs in Comp Lit and Modern Studies and, my college, Bennington, being what it was, to pristinely disordered lofts in SoHo and vacant family apartments in Paris and London. But when I signed on with Pelops that night at Bennington, I was sure that I was putting myself at the center of the world's churning gyre. The truth is that from then to now I've hardly met a rich person who seemed to have much gift for happiness. Boredom is not as deadly as extreme want, but in the long run it can do some of the same nefarious things. Anybody who wasn't at least a touch miserable under the current conditions wasn't paying attention: humanity was suffering and one was compelled to be mournful about it, at least some of the time. I was leaving New York as a failure. The way I saw it that day, New York was something like a sports franchise, and every year it summoned a horde of young people, rookies, to town. There were official draft choices who came with jobs at banks and art galleries, and there were the undrafted free-agent types like me. Then New York did its trick of shaking out and sieving through, separating goats and sheep, and in the end, after a year or two, most of the weak had come to understand themselves in their weakness. They hit the road. So what was the teacher's edge? My plan was simple: I was going to give the kids all I could, but I was going to exploit every chance the place gave me to develop as I wanted to. I was going to get myself an education--a real one this time--and get paid for it. I was going to draw more from the Woodstock School than any full-tuition paying customer. I'd work for the kids, but they were also going to be working for me.

Great Memoir

This is a really wonderful book. It's an honest look at a man graduating from college and trying to make his way in the world. Edmundson, like a lot of young people, is a quester; he's looking for what he calls "it", the way of life meant especially for him. And he looks in a lot of interesting places: driving a cab, toting amps on a stage crew, hiking in the Colorado mountains and even working in a disco. Edmundson is a terrific storyteller. His stories are funny, sharp and entertaining. As he passes from job to job, chapter to chapter, he conveys something that sounds a lot like wisdom.

Another hit for Edmundson

I've been reading this man since Nightmare On Main Street, a cogent analysis on the very beginning of the horror-porn genre. Can anyone say SAW? Gee, did he call that one? Fairly recently, in addition to the role as an in your face cultural critic, Edmundson has started another track in his career with the memoir-as-cultural- mirror book. "The Fine Wisdom..." is the latest installment and, for me at least, it does a better and more entertaining job of limning the oft-maligned 70s than anything else I've read. Very much as Charles Newman's great (unknown) book, A Child's History of America, did for the late 60s. No decade is a joke. There were millions of us who, like the author, stumbled, stood up, experimented, judged, matured or didn't, and finally found our souls and settled on vocations (default or otherwise) in those years. As he writes, it was both easier and harder than it is now: "growing up" wasn't lionized, success wasn't defined; there were few auto-tracks to law school-business school-investment banking to either cleave to or reject. You had to make yourself up--something that is always true, but gets disguised when you live in a society of career-path freeways and financial fear, as we live in now. Edmunson is consistantly ahead of the curve, and I don't know how he does it. If you were growing up then, or if your parents were, you should read this book as a hilarious and fascinating overture of young life in the very different country that shaped many of the souls in positions of cultural and political power in contemporary America. Then buy and read The Death of Sigmund Freud--a title that sounds like Novocaine, and reads like Le Carre. He also/always just writes crazy good.