The Whistling Song

by Stephen Beachy

Book Overview

This electric on-the-road novel relates the adventures (mostly midwestern) of Matt, fugitive from an orphanage, hitchhiker into the indifferent 1980s. Here are Huck and Jim titled for today. Stephen Beachy's voice is engaging and subversive as he captures the essence of Matt, a survivor who is streetsmart yet innocent.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0393029646
• ISBN13: 9780393029642
• Release Date: January 1991
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Length: 411 Pages
• Weight: 1.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.5" x 6.0" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Jesus, this book is amazing!

This is an amazing book. It could very well be the best book that I've read in ten years. It's all in here. Sex and Death. Good and Evil. Black and White. The promise and theft of the American Dream. Every passage in here is to be read slowly and lingered over. Each intense and powerful. It brings up images of the American outlaw, the rambler, the individualist. The main character, Matt, is Huckleberry Finn, Walt Whitman and Woody Guthrie all mixed up in the mind of an orphan, conflicted and scarred yet a beautiful and ultimately altruistic soul. Not unlike many of the weird, down-trodden and seeking folks that he meets as he crosses back and forth on the highways of America, Nam vets, UFO nuts, philosophy spewing bag ladies, etc. It goes deep inside the mind of people suffering from great loss, abuse and hardship and deals with stuff like Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome is such a subtle and legitimate way that I feel like an idiot using such a clunky term to describe it here. This book deals with the entire American mental and physical landscape. Overstating it too the fantastical, only to make it all the more real. Reminding the reader of the first time they took of on the open road and everything was volumous and life altering. This is far and away the most underrated book I've ever read. So don't screw up and pass it up.

Wow!

I can't recall any other novel that is at once so lyrically beautiful, dryly witty, and intelectually erudite. The highlight, for me, was the seamingly endless cavalcade of minor characters, each entirely believable and strangely familiar. Though the book is a timeless classic, revealing eternal verities about human nature and the nature of society, it also captures the particualr insanity of Reagan-era America rather perfectly. Whistling Song easily makes my list of ten books I'd wish to have with me were I marooned on a desert isle.

Hidden Genius

This is one of the most inspired and inspiring books I've ever read. Hands down one of my three favorites (along with McCammon's "Boy's Life" and Reiken's "The Odd Sea"). Beachy writes with total abandon, seamlessly weaving the story together even while alternating time periods. I am bewildered as to how this book escaped everyone's view. Every sentence is unforgettable. Any attempt to further describe "Whistling Song" would do it a terrible injustice. Read it for yourself.

Fairy tale and reality play out side by side

Stephen Beachy has captured the fantasy of childhood dreams and combined them with the harsh realities of life as a young man. THE WHISTLING SONG shifts back and forth from the safety and security of a hot bubble bath to the dangers of hitchhiking. This is a story of the wonders of childhood with a "Leave it to Beaver" beginning and an "On The Road" finish. Matt, the main character, searches for a way to return to his wonderous youth, he searches for answers about his parent's killers, and he searches for his own sexual identity. This is a long story, but as well written as it is, this book was a joy to read.

overlooked classic

It seems that somehow, somewhere a classic has been overlooked. Stephen Beachy's postmodern epic ranks up with Joyce's Ullysses and Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow as one of the greatest books ever written. Why has this book been ignored when it should be shouted from the hilltops of America? This book is a gift that entertains, enlightens and breaks apart reality.