This novel concerns the belated coming of age of a thirty-three-year-old small-town rock-and-roll has-been. Charlie Irish is an almost-celebrity bass player for a band called the Third Rail, which breaks up on a tour of the East Coast. Alone and broke, he makes his way back to Far Rockaway, New York, where he must confront the meager prospects that await a home-town-boy who doesn't make good. / The plot has three major lines. The primary conflict is Charlie Irish's desire to form another band opposed by his growing awareness of the mediocrity of his musical abilities. The musicians he auditions are incompatible because of their lackadaisical attitude toward music or their apparent greed or their disagreement with Charlie Irish's musical aesthetics. / The secondary plot line concerns Charlie's failed attempt to rekindle a relationship with the woman who had been his high school lover. A third progression of events deals with Charlie Irish's avoidance of his mother, as he fears her power (that of motherly-induced guilt, primarily) to force him to give up his dream of a life as a musician. The clash of Charlie Irish's dream of playing music all of his life with his lack of true ability--he cannot write songs, he cannot sing, he is not an impressive or particularly adept bass player--is the focus of much of the book's thematic content. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 51-12, Section: A, page: 4123. / Major Professor: Jerome Stern. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1990.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_78381 |
| Contributors | Murphy, Kevin., Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text |
| Format | 239 p. |
| Rights | On campus use only. |
| Relation | Dissertation Abstracts International |
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