Product Description

A pioneering music journalist's wry, candid, and hard-hitting look at aging and death.

As witness to and participant in the graying of the first generation of rock 'n' roll fans, Richard Meltzer is well equipped to confront the reality of our shared mortality. A sublime and moving collection of essays by a master of style, Autumn Rhythm is a clear-eyed gape into the Abyss that is equal parts candor, courage, humor, and desperation.

From deconstructing the "geezer wardrobe" to the wacked-out notion of one's legacy to the inevitable loss of pets, parents, and lovers, Autumn Rhythm is an unflinching staring contest with the One Thing We All Have In Common from a writer whose work has always been grounded in the syncopation of sound and sense.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5780935 in Books
• Published on: 2004-09-30
• Format: Bargain Price
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 209 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Meltzer (A Whore Just Like the Rest), who has pioneered rock 'n' roll criticism since the 1960s, explores the intricacies of growing old while looking back on some of the highs and lows of the years that he can remember. Penned in his usual out-of-the-blue writing style, these poems, essays and haikus seem to all blend into one long rant at times. But that's by design, since Meltzer's credo on aging argues that people should get everything out of their systems before time runs out. "The Wisdom in Our Underwear," a far-out take on the 20th century, is both entertaining (on 1984: "Reagan had to be Prez; the Olympics had to be staged in L.A.... There was no irony left in the world") and stimulating, if not hard to follow at times. Still, saying that anything that happened after 1969 has been off "the frigging map" does show a hint of '60s smugness, especially for someone who drops pop culture references from the 1970s through the '90s throughout his book. His "musings" on old age are basically a collection of journal entries on what he does, or did, as well as people he has known. Among these ruminations are some nuggets of truth about aging, like his football analogy that once a person hits a certain age, life's playing field gets shorter and you have to settle for "three yards and a cloud of dust" instead of "80-yard passes." The book's narrative structure supports this thought; plow through the parts that strike your fancy and for the rest throw a Hail Mary pass and hope for the best.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Meltzer's agent once wanted to turn him into "the new Charles Bukowski." Catch was, he would have to "be and behave like an 'old curmudgeon.'" No dice then, but now, at 58, though Meltzer still doesn't cop to being old, he has noticed things . . and forgotten others, which induces "Autumn Rhythm," a rant in his finest and funniest manner, an epical vernacular monologue with stylistic roots in nineteenth-century humorists Bill Nye, Artemus Ward, and Mark Twain. The piece is, of course, on aging, a subject Meltzer's apparently absent-minded self-interruption and digression suit to a tee. The other long pieces here vary the theme. "The Wisdom in Our Underwear" ruminates on the end of the twentieth century, and "Middle Beginning End" considers Meltzer's relations with his mother, now quite senile; both are less manic than "Autumn Rhythm," with the latter achieving genuine emotional weight. The accompanying short pieces are poems and essays about departed acquaintances, including a very perspicacious assessment of . . . Charles Bukowski. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
"Cranky...self-consciously reflective...tender...and funny as hell." -- Creative Loafing 11/12/03

"Invigorating...entertaining and insightful...This collection of essays and slapdash collage of poetry and prose is a triumph." -- Buffalo News 11/23/03

"It's a honey...the blend of prose, poetry and sheer cussedness is magnificent...a monster of a goddamn read." -- Arthur November 2003

"Meltzer is playful with the language...and he can make you laugh...[he] break[s] cultural taboos like so many pinatas." -- Kirkus Reviews 10/1/03

"Meltzer ponders all the cruel absurdities and mortal wounds endured in the inevitable onset of his geezer years." -- Philadelphia Weekly 11/5/03

"Meltzer's best and profoundest book...more contrarily alive, more all-encompassing, more human than anything he's ever written before." -- The Wire April 2004

"Meltzer's heartsickness pounds through Autumn Rhythm...Vivid, graceful, desperate, and funny-always funny." -- Village Voice 11/17/03

"One of the greatest writers/thinkers/observers of our time, period...Playful, raw, and smutty, yet also perceptive, honest, and intelligent." -- Stop Smiling Magazine 03/19/04

"Smart, funny, and extremely idiosyncratic, Meltzer is a writer who will hook you like a drug." -- Los Angeles Reader

"[Meltzer's] prose embodies the passion, humor, rambunctiousness, sexuality, and angst of rock...crotchety and hilarious...Meltzer rocks." -- Austin Chronicle 12/05/03

Customer Reviews

He's Ba-a-ack!
He's a curmudgeon always was, a cat with a taste for sour cream, a brilliant distressingly human type guy. Won't lie down and go to sleep on top of pedestals. Falls off roaring words, heart blazing from both barrels. He's a rock, jazz, and culture critic I first remember from the sixties. He saw through the ominous commercialization of music and culture back then, and he's been sawing through ever since.

If you're aging and alive as ever, remember something huge happening in the 60's that had nothing to do with misty water-colored memories, wonder how the exhilarating changes that took place for so many of us could have been so thoroughly distorted, effaced and buried in reams of ridicule, 'serious' criticism and nostalgic pap, (whew but true), Meltzer might be just what your bruised spirit needs.

If yr a cat with a taste for sour creem.

Rants on Geezerhood from Old Man Meltzer
This is an uneven collection of rants and reflections on growing old from the grey area between middle and old age. Like most people who find the world changing more quickly than their ability to adjust to those changes as they grow old, Meltzer strives to make a virtue out of his inability to adapt to computers and the Internet, indiscriminately lumping them together with MTV and other, less benign, cultural excrescences. These sections are rather hackneyed and about what you'd hear from any aging 60's-survivor barfly muttering over his beer. More effective are Meltzer's unflinching descriptions of the physical decay and the loss of old friends and enemies that accompany staying alive over time. Read and heed, young people, and see what you have to look forward to (not that there's much you can do about it).