Rock Stars in Fiction

The Guardian explores the world of rockers in books.

From the piece...

It was with great pleasure, as an adolescent, that I came upon a copy of Iain Banks' Espedair Street. Having been reared on the 19th-century novel, it was a liberating experience to discover a text which focused on what seemed to me the ultimate signifier for contemporaneity: rock stardom. For Espedair Streets' protagonist is Dan Weir ("Weird"), the hopelessly ugly bassist of successful Paisley rock band Frozen Gold. Banks charts their rise to fame through the 1970s, amid the usual drugs and excess, until their split which leaves Weir a recluse in Glasgow, wondering what to do with the rest of his life.

At the time, having had little exposure to contemporary fiction, that a book could deal with such subject matter was thrilling, a revelation. These days, of course, we are accustomed to the detailed examination of pop culture in literary fiction, with novelists such as Pynchon, Vonnegut and David Foster Wallace writing in detail about TV and related ephemera. For Wallace: "One of the most recognisable things about [last] century's postmodern fiction was the movement's strategic deployment of pop-cultural references – brand names, celebrities, television programs – in even its loftiest high art projects." Still, literary rock stars – and by this I mean major fictional protagonists – seem relatively few and far between, given how saturated our culture is by popular music.