The Fine Wisdom and Perfect Teachings of the Kings of Rock and Roll - Paperback

by Mark Edmundson (Author)

"Hilarious, harrowing, and ultimately inspiring.... Truly, there is something arresting and wonderful on every page."
-- Michael Pollan

"With sentences that sometimes astonish" (Matthew Crawford, author of Shop Class as Soulcraft), celebrated cultural critic Mark Edmundson has written a hip and hilarious coming-of-age memoir about one man's miscues and false starts as he enters the world after college. Through exhilarating adventures, he attempts to answer the timeless question of who he is, while contemplating what role music, love, work, drugs, money, and books will play in his life.

Front Jacket

After graduating from college in 1974, Mark Edmundson leaves Vermont to seek his destiny--a quest he knows involves rock and roll and America's high court of mischief and ambition, New York City. Shepherded by a carousing, Marx-quoting friend, he moves into a grungy apartment and embarks on a dream career lugging amps for rock's biggest stars: the Grateful Dead, Pink Floyd, and the Allman Brothers.

But as time wears on, Edmundson finds himself at odds with life in his adopted city and drifts through a regimen of late-night cab driving and radical politics, increasingly detached from the hopes he nursed back in school. Prodded and enlightened along the way by a cast of rogue mentors--his Kings (and Queens) of Rock and Roll--Edmundson checks out of New York and careens across the country in search of the elusive it: the perfect vocation, his slightly crazy, ideal way of life.

--Michael Pollan, author of Food Rules: An Eater's Manual and The Omnivore's Dilemma

Back Jacket

After graduating from college in 1974, Mark Edmundson leaves Vermont to seek his destiny--a quest he knows involves rock and roll and America's high court of mischief and ambition, New York City. Shepherded by a carousing, Marx-quoting friend, he moves into a grungy apartment and embarks on a dream career lugging amps for rock's biggest stars: the Grateful Dead, Pink Floyd, and the Allman Brothers.

But as time wears on, Edmundson finds himself at odds with life in his adopted city and drifts through a regimen of late-night cab driving and radical politics, increasingly detached from the hopes he nursed back in school. Prodded and enlightened along the way by a cast of rogue mentors--his "Kings (and Queens) of Rock and Roll"--Edmundson checks out of New York and careens across the country in search of the elusive "it" the perfect vocation, his slightly crazy, ideal way of life.