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Product Description
He claims he's not a fan of rock-and-roll, but somehow Harlan Ellison's seminal novel based on the career of Jerry Lee Lewis ended up in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. One of the first - and still one of the best - dissections of the wildly destructive rock-and-roll lifestyle, Spider Kiss isn't about giant cockroaches that attack Detroit or space invaders that smell like chicken soup. Instead, it's the story of Luther Sellers, a poor kid from Louisville with a voice like an angel who's renamed Stag Preston by a ruthless promoter. Preston's meteoric rise on the music scene is matched only by the rise in his enormous appetites - and not just for home cooking - and soon the invisible monkey named Success is riding him straight to hell. This raucous early novel reinforces Ellison's reputation as one of America's most dynamic writers.
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First there was only the empty golden circle of the hot spot, blazing against the silk curtains. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
First there was only the empty golden circle of the hot spot, blazing against the silk curtains. Read the first page
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
3.6 out of 5 stars (8 customer reviews)
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Bone Chilling, Mar 20 2011
By Acacia "echostecho" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Spider Kiss (Paperback)
Some books introduce us to characters we come to love and adore. In our minds they transform into parents, teachers, siblings or lovers. These are the characters that grab our imagination and continue to move us through the story with a strong, swift hand. And then there are books who give us characters that we know a little too well to like, characters that are more comprised of bits and pieces of ourselves than we'd like to acknowledge. And then there are books that give us characters we hate so strongly that they hold more power over us than the other two combined. Spider Kiss possesses the most striking example of the third and more than a healthy dose of the second, so naturally, I found it impossible to put down.Music from this era has never completely done it for me. I like it, it's nice, I have plenty of it on my ipod. But an entire book centered around the subject based in a time period I think is rather dull? Not very exciting stuff. And yet as the story progresses, as the characters fall into a never ending cycle of greed and depravity all of this slips away because really, the story is universal. The basic frame of the plot is only a cleverly built vehicle for the real meat of the story. Ellison could have based it anywhere on anyone and it would have packed the same punch.
There's really not much more to say other than for me to express my utter awe that this book doesn't have more reviews yet. Ellison's prose jack knifes off the page as he tackles his subject. The novel its self is an eerie blend of social criticism, moral rebuke, demonology, feminist telling and good old fashioned noir pulp. If you haven't read it do so now.
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars
Harlan does Elvis., April 6 1997
By A Customer - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Spider Kiss (Paperback)
Well, maybe not Elvis, but Elvis could play him perfectly in a movie version (if there were a movie version, and if Elvis would take such an unflattering role, and if he weren't old and, not to mince words, dead). Where was I. Yes, it's a full-length Ellison novel, one of his earliest, about a country boy who becomes a huge rock star. The interesting stuff is Ellison's creation of a character who is able to come across as a charming kid and a glamorous star, while gradually being revealed to us as a real scum of a human being. Ellison does it beautifully, from his vantage point as someone who has clearly spent too much time hanging around people in the showbiz industry
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars
Before your time, kids, Oct 28 2001
By JCPancakes - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Spider Kiss (Paperback)
I suspect that some of the reviewers here were not born yet when this book was written (1961). It is very much a piece of its time and era, back when Ellison really *was* an Angry Young Man (and not a Cranky Old Fart). It wasn't his best book, by any means, but it gives a cynical view of an industry that even then, used people. Yes, the rockabilly star might remind you of Elvis, but what happens might also remind you of the much older tale of Fatty Arbuckle. I read the book in the early 70s, and some of the imagery is still with me. I can still remember the off-hand comment about the visual effect of one-piece girdles, and I remember having to ask someone what it meant to have the cylinders in one's Mercedes re-bored. If you've read The Web of the City, you should read this too.
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