 Talking Heads: 77
"John Domini has brilliantly turned one of literary fiction's
neatest tricks: he has vividly and accurately evoked a past time
and milieu—the
alternative cultural scene of the mid-70s—and in the process he has
illuminated our own times with dazzling clarity. Talking Heads: 77 also
manages to be both cutting-edge innovative and splendidly readable.
This book is a flat-out delight."
—Robert Olen Butler
author of A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain,
Pulitzer Prize in Fiction 1993
"Talking Heads: 77 reminds us of a generation's crushing
loss of idealism. Through an impassioned post-Watergate journalist
whose interior angst is articulated in illusory news columns for
a fantasized issue of his alternative newspaper, John Domini captures
the kind
of innocence
it once took to believe in our quixotic convictions, to believe
we could invoke change, to believe we couldn’t be perverted or corrupted.
Simultaneously he recreates the visceral disillusionment that had
engulfed many of us by
the time the 70’s were over."
—Cris Mazza, author of Girl Beside Him and Is It Sexual Harassment Yet?
"Talking Heads: 77 is a bravura performance by John Domini.
The novel is exuberant, stylishly written, and nearly pops at the
seams with a rich and diverse cast of characters including a drugged-out
denizen
of the deep, the idealistic editor of a political rag, a pony-
riding Boston Brahmin intent on finding herself and shedding her husband,
an up and coming
punkster who fancies evenings at the Knights of Columbus Ladies
Auxilary, an editorial assistant named Topsy Otaka, a single mother with
problems,
corrupt politicos, you name it. Full of warmth and humor, Talking
Heads: 77 is a rollicking ride of a read. Enjoy."
—Frances Sherwood author of Vindication, Green, and The Book of Splendor
"John Domini is fiction's own Greil Marcus, revealing the secret history
that has made us all; in Talking
Heads: 77,
Kit Viddich is our tour guide, a reporter raking the muck to find
the ore, and exploring the cellars, by starlight. Thecellars, the
basement, the
closet, the underground—John Domini knows that the dank oubliettes of our
world are the places of darkness and death, and also the wellsprings,
the very life of our culture."
Brian Bouldrey author of Love, the Magician, The Genius of Desire
and the essay collection Monster: Adventures in American Machismo
Read the Des Moines Register's review of Talking Heads: 77. |
