Contemporary popular music provides the soundtrack for a host of recent novels, but little critical attention has been paid to the intersection of these important art forms.
Write in Tuneaddresses this gap by offering the first full-length study of the relationship between recent music and fiction. With essays from an array of international scholars, the collection focuses on how writers weave rock, punk, and jazz into their narratives, both to develop characters and themes and to investigate various fan and celebrity cultures surrounding contemporary music.
Write in Tunecovers major writers from America and England, including Don DeLillo, Jonathan Franzen, Zadie Smith, and Jim Crace. But it also explores how popular music culture is reflected in postcolonial, Latino, and Australian fiction. Ultimately, the book brings critical awareness to the power of music in shaping contemporary culture, and offers new perspectives on central issues of gender, race, and national identity.
Introduction
Erich Hertz and Jeffrey Roessner
Part 1: Negotiating Pop Styles
1. More Than Zero: Post-Punk Ideology (And Its Rejection) in Bret Easton Ellis
Matthew Luter, Faculty Member, Webb School, USA
2. Consistently Original, Perennially Unheard Of : Punk, Margin and Mainstream in Jonathan Franzen'sFreedom
Mark Bresnan, Assistant Professor of Academic Writing, Marymount Manhattan College, USA
3. A Novel Idea for a Soundtrack: Tim Winton's Dirt Music
Tanya Dalziell, Professor in English and Cultural Studies, University of Western Australia, Australia
4. Where the Beat Sounds the Same :American Psychoand the Cultural Capital of Pop Music
Carl Miller, Assistant Professor of English, Palm Beach Atlantic University, USA
5. Playing (in) Seattle: Grunge as a Narrative Soundscape in Mark Lindquist'sNever Mind Nirvana
Fiorenzo Iuliano, Lecturer in Amerilă