Spider Kiss

One of the best novels written about Rock n' Roll. Written pre-Beatles, and one of Ellison's earlier novels, the plot centers around a Presley/Holly type performer and is full of cynical looks at the music business. The plot and theme has an eerie resemblance to the film, A Face in the Crowd which a......more

60 years ahead of its time. Harlan is gone and he's still relevant and kicking my ass across the floor.......more

Written before rock'n'roll as we have come to know it even existed, pre-British invasion when Elvis was a young star of rockabilly, this is Ellison's only non-sf novel other than the crime novel Web of the City. It examines the lure of celebrity and the magic of the music with an unforgiving and una......more

Well, I didn't do this slightly ambitious pop/noir offering by a very young Harlan Ellison any favors by reading it overlapping first with a novel by J.-K. Huysmans and then one by Kathy Acker. Ellison's 20-something attempt at cynical noir set in the rock-'n'-roll business of starmaking, with the u......more

It's a little surprising to me that this novel is in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame because it's a cautionary tale more than anything else that shows the darker side of the business. A great novel that was written in 1961 but is very timeless. We have the story of the rise of a Rockabilly star (thin......more