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Title: Unfortunately
Review: It is really the five stars that scare me.....this novel is only so good as you avoid all the others who have done this "genre" before. By genre I mean the rock and roll novel, the spectacle, and the myths we place upon those persons. Rushdie is about thirty years too late to pick up the mantle of Thomas Pynchon, and it shows: where TP's songs resonate with creativity, Rushdie's are more along the lines for the older Sting/ Will Smith crowd. Something I think is a mistake in the book is thinking music remains the same for all generations, that the enthusiasm is the base element in equal supply throughout. This isn't so--music takes many forms and different guises and means many different things; and it proceeds at a brutally quick pace. Rushdie would have done well to not have studied his U2 buddies so much. The world has passed them by, and what he thinks he encapsulates slips out his fingers as easily as a hand misses a chord.
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