i READ

Three cheers for Lewis Shiner who has posted his fiction along with a manifesto about the collapse of short fiction markets and the importance of short fiction as a way for writers to experiment and for readers to discover new writers.

He calls the project the "Fiction Liberation Front."

I'm told that the following is possibly Shiner's greatest work. It'll haunt you every time you hear a Beatles, Beach Boys, Doors, or Jimi Hendrix song. The book is now out of print but I just ordered mine from Amazon. I can't wait!


From Library Journal:

Shiner ( Slam , LJ 8/1/90, among others) has written what may be the first rock n roll time-travel novel. Ray Chackleford is a self-employed electronics repairman whose marriage is foundering and whose father has recently died. These unresolved relationships are complicated when Ray travels to the Mexican site of his father's death and promptly falls in love with a woman even more unstable than he. In the midst of this emotional turmoil, Ray--a rock drummer during his youth in the late Sixties--begins to hear in his head and manages to transfer to tape legendary unfinished recordings by Jim Morrison, Brian Wilson, and Jimi Hendrix. This music is accompanied by "journeys" into the troubled lives of these rock musicians. Shiner's appealing main character and his gripping style overcome the less believable aspects of his story. With the current comeback of the Sixties, this novel should be widely popular.