Happy 77th Birthday, Elvis!

This past Sunday, January 8^th, fans the world over gathered to celebrate and remember the life of the King of Rock and Roll, Elvis Presley, on the anniversary of his 77^th birthday. Thousands of guests visited the Heartbreak Hotel and other Graceland attractions, as well as the Elvis Presley Birthplace in Tupelo, Mississippi to honor the King, who passed away in 1977. In Memphis, the historic city where Elvis’s prodigious talents first came to light, officials proclaimed the date a new city-wide holiday, Elvis Presley Day.

Elvis has the largest and most dedicated following in the history of show business, and this year’s birthday festivities jump-start what will undoubtedly be a moving year for Elvis fans worldwide, as it commemorates the 35^th anniversary of his untimely death at the age of 42. For Presley enthusiasts searching to learn more about the life and career of the biggest name in show business during this historic anniversary year, Overlook offers a wide range of books about the King, ranging from encyclopedic compendiums detailing his dual careers on the stage and on the screen, to original fiction inspired by the Presley legacy.

Elvis first performed in Vegas in 1958 and bombed. His rockabilly act was considered too uncouth for an older audience used to show tunes, and he didn’t return until 1963. By the late 1960s, however, the King had won over the city of sin, and would ultimately perform more than eight hundred sold-out shows throughout the city’s hotels and casinos before his death in 1977. Elvis in Vegas, the latest addition to the Overlook Elvis collection, spotlights the King’s life and career in Las Vegas. Published in late 2011, it features over 300 full-color and black-and-white photos, as well as concert and set lists, news clippings, and interviews. Written and compiled by Elvisologist and long time Presley friend Paul Lichter, Elvis in Vegas is the missing volume in any Elvis aficionado’s collection.

For a more comprehensive guide to all things Presley, The Elvis Encyclopedia by Adam Victor is “a valuable one-stop source of all things informational about the King. The A-Z reference covers seemingly every person, place, and thing that touched Elvis's eventful life” (Bookpage). A visual compendium of Elvis’s career, featuring more than four hundred photographs ranging from never-before seen candid moments to the extraordinary iconic images the world has come to love, Elvis in Vegas is the definitive one-stop resources for fans and scholars of the King.

Elvis’s Hollywood years are rigorously documented in The Elvis Film Encyclopedia, a guidebook to Elvis’s more than thirty iconic appearances on the silver screen, as well as the original music he wrote and recorded for his films ranging from fan favorites Love Me Tender, Jailhouse Rock, and King Creole to the golden-globe winning documentary Elvis on Tour. With an unbiased view, one-to-five star ratings for all his movies, as well as complete credits, synopses, and soundtrack details, The Elvis Film Encyclopedia offers a fresh look at the cultural phenomenon and the distinctive place Elvis’s movies hold in film history.

Part mystery, part love story, part commentary on America’s waning presence throughout the world, P.F. Kluge’s Biggest Elvis tells the story of a trio of Elvis impersonators working out of a club called Graceland set in the Philippines. Biggest Elvis revives and re-envisions the life of America’s leading twentieth-century folk hero in an edgy and compassionate novel that NPR calls, “highly entertaining.”

P.F. Kluge's GONE TOMORROW and BIGGEST ELVIS Now Available in Paperback

Just released in paperback are two literary gems from P.F. Kluge: Gone Tomorrow and Biggest Elvis. A longtime writer-in-residence at Kenyon College in Ohio, Kluge has written seven acclaimed and beloved novels. He also works as a journalist, writing for magazines such as National Geographic Traveler, Rolling Stone, Smithsonian, Islands, Playboy, and Reader's Digest. And we're thrilled that Overlook will be publishing a new novel by P.F. Kluge, A Call From New Jersey, in September 2010.

Here's what Kluge says about Biggest Elvis, originally published in 1995, and now back in a print with the one of our coolest covers ever!

"What began as one Philippines-based novel, then another, became a trilogy with Biggest Elvis. In this case, journalism led to fiction. I visited the mammoth U.S. Naval base at Subic Bay twice, once on assignment for Rolling Stone magazine, once for Playboy. The place was unforgettable: a neon wilderness, a sexual vanity fair, a high water mark of American military and cultural power. There was more there than a pair of magazine articles could accommodate. Then my friend Lazarus Salii (see The Edge of Paradise) told me of a trio of singers who had come to Palau and been stranded there, broke. The three men were an Elvis Presley show, each incarnating a stage of the king’s life. The idea of three Elvis’s knocking around the world was appealing to me. A novel—which ought to be a movie—was born. It had music, sex, romance, politics, exotic locations. It was an American Year of Living Dangerously. Of all my books, this was the most fun to write. Every day, the question from manuscript to author was: what kind of fun are we going to have today? I think it shows.”

P.F. Kluge's GONE TOMORROW Wins Ohioana Book Award for Fiction

P.F. Kluge has won the Ohioana Book Award for Fiction for his 2008 novel Gone Tomorrow. He will be honored at the Ohioana Day Awards Ceremony on October 17 at the Ohio Statehouse in Columbus. The novel, now available in paperback, earned praise in reviews around the country and was included on lists of the best books of 2008 by National Public Radio and the Plain Dealer of Cleveland, Ohio. "Kluge has dozens of gorgeous, wrenching passages, details, throw-away observations," said the San Francisco Chronicle. "He can really write, like a man who means it." According to the New York Times, Gone Tomorrow is "a sharply observed yet tender novel of academic life and its many sand traps." Gone Tomorrow was among finalists who "represent the finest in the literature of our time," said Linda R. Hengst, executive director of the Ohioana Library. Finalists in the fiction category included novels by Toni Morrison and Curtis Sittenfeld. Kluge is the author of seven novels, including Eddie and the Cruisers and Biggest Elvis, and is writer-in-residence at Kenyon College.

More Love for P.F. Kluge's GONE TOMORROW

Book blogger Terry Weyna has a lot of love for P.F. Kluge's acclaimed novel Gone Tomorrow: "I’ve always loved academic novels. Perhaps it’s because academia was a career choice I reluctantly abandoned in order to go to law school; perhaps it’s because I still would like to get that Ph.D. in English someday; perhaps it’s because my husband is a university professor. Or maybe it’s just because academic novels are set in such an interesting milieu that I just can’t resist, a place where (based upon the fiction I read, not contacts with my husband’s colleagues) backbiting, backstabbing and gossip battle it out with intellectual passions, eccentric personalities and interesting conversation. Most academic novels seem to be satires, but this one is different: it is a sort of rueful love letter to academe. . . I saw much of my own college in this book. I attended a small private college on the western edge of Illinois that I loved with all my heart while I was there, and still love today, though I haven’t been back in decades. This book awakened in me all the joy I took in that place, in its glorious fall colors, its stubbornly tardy springs, the many, many books I read while I was there, how I learned, more than anything, to ask questions (I seemed to graduate with few answers, but oh, I knew so well how to ask questions!). I remembered the professors like Canaris, who would casually mention a book that I should read, a book that would become one of my lifelong favorites; my creative writing teacher, Don Erickson, whose notes on my adolescent scribbling I still have today; drinking beer and eating cheese popcorn at a horrible little bar with the chairmen of the English and Speech Departments and the president of the college, solving all the world’s problems. Kluge perfectly captures the love and joy that my student experiences embody, though from the viewpoint of those for whom I was simply another soul passing through. And he captures a life, too – one different from what the man who came to the campus in 1970 thought he was going to live, but one that was precious in every moment nonetheless. . . .Gone Tomorrow is a marvelous book, a genuine pleasure to read. Few books have reached my heart so completely. Sharply observed, wryly told, with pellucid prose, Gone Tomorrow deserves a wide audience. Kluge is a new author to me, but I will certainly be reading more from his pen, as he toils away at the small Ohio college (Kenyon College, in Gambier, Ohio) where he is a writer in residence."

Librarian's Choice: P.F. Kluge's GONE TOMORROW

P.F. Kluge's beloved novel Gone Tomorrow has been selected as a May pick by the San Francisco Public Library: "P. F. Kluge's affecting new novel, Gone Tomorrow, is the story of George Canaris, a writer who spends his career not writing but rather as a creative writing teacher at a small, bucolic Ohio college. (The college is, I suspect, not unlike Kenyon, where P. F. Kluge not only attended as an undergraduate, but where he has taught for a number of years.) This tale of the blessing and curse of an academic life for writers is framed by the search for a long-awaited, possibly non-existent, new novel of Canaris's. He wrote one novel in the 1960s, which brought him fame, fortune, a permanent place on the list of greatest works of fiction of all time, and a tenured position at a small but prestigious college. Then his agent and his publisher, not to mention the president of the college, the head of his department, his students, and his legion of fans, waited--in vain, as it turned out--for the appearance of a second novel, supposedly called The Beast. Finally--and against all the rules of tenure--the college decides to replace Canaris with a younger, more with-it (and productive) writer. What follows forces Canaris (and us) to think about fame, about what's important in life, and about love, loyalty, and the nature of creativity. Canaris is a simply wonderful character; the story of his life is moving, honest, tender and--occasionally--very funny. (When George meets John Henry Mallon, the wunderkind writer of gargantuan novels who replaces him, George reports this exchange in his journal: "'I've read your books,' he said. 'Great.' 'I've lifted yours,' I responded. 'Heavy.'") This is a good choice for readers who enjoy character-driven novels, but it's a must read for anyone who's spent any time in the world of academe. Kluge knows whereof he writes."

P.F. Kluge's GONE TOMORROW Featured in The Weekly Standard

David Skinner takes a look at Gone Tomorrow, the new novel by P.F. Kluge in The Weekly Standard: "P.F. Kluge is an accomplished writer with a number of good books under his belt. Eddie and the Cruisers, which is being reissued by Overlook Press, is a delicate work about the jagged soul of rock 'n' roll music and the type of introverted writer who wants nothing more than to be its amanuensis. Biggest Elvis was another rock 'n' roll novel, an often riveting take on the U.S. military pullout from the Philippines, the exporting of American culture, and the adrenaline rush of stage performance. So Kluge remains affectionate toward the pop culture of his youth, but he has filed more than a few complaints about the kids of today. A professor who teaches writing and postwar American literature at Kenyon, he's used his perch in Gambier, Ohio, to observe and criticize the coddled American college student, whom he suggests would be much better off if his behind were kissed less often by administrators with dollar signs in their eyes and U.S. News & World Report rankings where their hearts used to be. Such thinking--in Alma Mater, his book on the life of a liberal arts college, and a rather tough essay entitled "Camp Kenyon" that appeared in the Chronicle of Higher Education--has made Kluge a magnetic and yet crotchety character at the school of which he is both a critic and an old friend. . . Gone Tomorrow is thoroughly pleasurable: a solid academic comedy; a moving consideration of what it means to join a community and say, despite reservations, Here is Where I Belong; and a warm thank-you note to writers famous and forgotten for the reader's reward of a good lean book."