P.F. Kluge's EDDIE AND THE CRUISERS and Those Wild Summer Nights

Jeff Schwachter of Atlantic City Weekly has written a wonderful article on the 25th anniversary of the classic rock and roll film Eddie and The Cruisers, based on the novel by P.F. Kluge. Here's a brief excerpt about the book behind the film:

"Many things inspired novelist, freelance writer (Rolling Stone, Life) and northern New Jersey native Kluge to pen the 1980 novel. "Two or three things came together," says Kluge from his office at Ohio's Kenyon College where he has been a teacher for more than a decade. "I always loved early rock 'n' roll ... doo-wop groups basically. ... Those songs just kind of worked their way into me and I've never lost them. I carry them with me [and] the way that they could come back to you all through the rest of your life and haunt you intrigued me. And the second thing was wondering about what happens to the survivors of a group after its star, its leader, perishes."
"[Eddie] is about some tapes that were supposedly made way back when [and] going back into the past to retrieve something, to consider what happened to other people, and what has happened to you and what might have been," says Kluge.

Another inspiration for Kluge's book was southern New Jersey, a landscape the young writer caught only a glimpse of one summer, long ago. "In the summer of 1962, I worked as a reporter -- a sort of summer job -- on the Vineland Times Journal," says Kluge. "And this acquainted me with a New Jersey that was quite different from the New Jersey I knew. Because the northern part of the state is sort of within the field of force of New York City. ... the southern part was entirely different. It was rural. It was eccentric. It was a little mysterious to me: the diners, the traffic circles, the little crossroad towns, the odd pockets of ethnic groups."

"I always liked the fact that the filmmakers did two things," says Kluge. "They stuck with the flashback structure [of the novel] -- so you're cutting back and forth between the present time, where Frank Ridgeway, the Wordman, is a high-school teacher in early middle-age, and going back to the summer on the Jersey Shore maybe two decades or so before. ... I like that they had the integrity to stay with that so that the past and present could play off each other.
"The other thing is [they] could have made it about a surf group in California and they made it in New Jersey," says Kluge. "That pleased me." Kluge always wanted his main character to be from South Jersey. "I think when I sat down to write Eddie in 1980, I realized that I didn't want him to be a suburban kid who was going into Greenwich Village on weekends," says Kluge. "I wanted him to be from that New Jersey 'down south.' And I thought Vineland was a good town for him to be from."

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."

P.F. Kluge's GONE TOMORROW is Named one of the Best Books of 2008 by Cleveland Plain-Dealer

Karen Long, Book Editor of the Cleveland Plain-Dealer and member of the National Book Critics Circle, has selected her choices for the Best Books of 2008. Included on the list is Gone Tomorrow, by P.F. Kluge: "Anyone who has ever set foot in Gambier will instantly recognize "a small college on a hill in central Ohio" as Kenyon College, where the author teaches creative writing and sets his beguiling story. It tells of English professor George Canaris, once a wunderkind who bogs down in a 'college ate my masterpiece' syndrome. The novel unspools into a wry, wise and literary pleasure."

Photo courtesy of Ruth Smilan.

P.F. Kluge's GONE TOMORROW a Bookseller Pick on NPR's Morning Edition

Susan Stamberg of NPR's Morning Edition talked to independent booksellers across the country this morning about their picks for the holidays. On the list is P.F. Kluge's Gone Tomorrow: "In the tradition of Richard Russo's Straight Man, P.F. Kluge alternates between humor and poetic examinations of the academic pursuit, along the way touching on the basic elements of love, commitment to career and friendship." Click here to read an excerpt, and listen to Morning Edition's Bookseller's Picks for Holiday Lists!

EDDIE AND THE CRUISERS is Back in Print: Now Let's Get on With the Music!

We love Sarah Weinman's Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind blog on crime fiction and mysteries, and we are thrilled that one of her picks of the week is P.F. Kluge's legendary Eddie and the Cruisers. Now available in a new paperback edition from Overlook, with an amazing introduction by Sherman Alexie, this is essential reading for the rock and roll generation. Here's Sarah's thoughts: "How many ways can I recommend what ought to be a permanent resident of the modern canon? I'll stick to one: I was browsing in an independent bookstore and thought I'd read the first chapter. I ended up storming through the first 2/3rds before I had to leave, buying in haste and in a cranky and foul state because I couldn't finish it up until later that night. The writing is pitched perfectly and the pacing is sublime, but most of all, it puts in your head the kind of music that makes you want to rise up and do something amazing with your life."

P.F. Kluge's GONE TOMORROW in The New York Times

Janet Maslin reviews Gone Tomorrow in The New York Times: "A sharply observed yet tender novel of academic life and its many sand traps, P. F. Kluge (himself a writer in residence at Kenyon College, which is the subject of his nonfiction book “Alma Mater”) uses the persona of Canaris to describe the dangers that a writer-teacher faces. Even that job description defies reason. Why is it that “in the same way that people assume an opera singer can handle folk music or a four-star chef can preside over a short-order grill, it is assumed that a writer can teach writing”? The first and perhaps greatest danger about which Gone Tomorrow warns is that of getting too comfortable inside a college’s cozy microcosm. Finally, in a turn that might have tickled Canaris had he lived to see it, “Gone Tomorrow"is a good title. Too good. Mr. Kluge’s “Gone Tomorrow” is already being outsold on Amazon.com by Lee Child's “Gone Tomorrow,” a Jack Reacher thriller that doesn’t come out until May. Should any of Mr. Child’s devotees order the wrong novel by mistake, they’ll still get a book about a sharp-eyed, solitary troublemaker. They probably won’t be sorry."

P.F. Kluge's GONE TOMORROW in Entertainment Weekly

Jennifer Reese gives Gone Tomorrow a high grade in this week's Entertainment Weekly: "George Canaris, the narrator of P.F. Kluge's sparkling new novel Gone Tomorrow, is a famous writer who takes a job teaching at a small Ohio college — and for the next three decades talks about (but fails to publish) his next big book, a mysterious project that he refers to as ''the Beast.'' What, exactly, has Canaris been doing all these years, and what is the nature of the Beast? These are the questions Kluge entertains in this witty and astute tragicomedy about academia and the trajectory of an artist's life. B+ "

P.F. Kluge Presents "First and Not Quite Last Thoughts On a Small College in Ohio" in NYC on October 7

P.F. Kluge, author of the forthcoming Gone Tomorrow and Writer-In-Residence at Kenyon College, will speak at Bloomberg News in New York on October 7 at 7pm. Kluge will present "First and Not Quite Last Thoughts On a Small College in Ohio," which, coincidentally, is the setting for his new novel. For more information on this event, please visit the Kenyon College site.

Rave Reviews for P.F. Kluge's GONE TOMORROW in Booklist and Kirkus

P.F. Kluge's new novel Gone Tomorrow is reviewed in the October 1 issue of Booklist: "Without pretense, Gone Tomorrow offfers an insider's view of the politics of academia and all it entails. Kluge buoys the novel through to the end with intimate details about personal and professional failure, set against success in small doses, and he anchors the tale in a vivid rendering of the passage of time." Kirkus Reviews notes: "Kluge offers a fictional, expansive and discursive take on a teacher's writing life at a small, unnamed college in Ohio. His sharp writing and vivid descriptions elevate what could have been another novel about a frustrated writer's second act."

Gone Tomorrow, along with a new paperback edition of Kluge's classic 1980 novel Eddie and the Cruisers will be available in bookstores in November.

Advance Praise for P.F. Kluge's GONE TOMORROW

Early reviews are arriving for P.F. Kluge's new novel Gone Tomorrow, which will be published in November:

"The novel is suffused with Kluge’s obvious affection for books, and has some cleverly aphoristic things to say about the joys of teaching, the pitfalls of academic infighting and the tragedy of artistic expectations left unfulfilled. This novel combines elements of Citizen Kane and Goodbye, Mr. Chips for a satisfying resolution." - Publishers Weekly

"In his ninth book, acclaimed writer/professor Kluge cleverly combines an affectionate memoir with some elements of suspense. Readers learn about an interesting group of characters who've intersected a man's life, many of whom ring true as individuals and as archetypes of literature students, academics, and small-town inhabitants. Kluge also provides insight into a successful writer's fears about writing a failed novel and the pressures to publish continually. Effectively shunning pedantry, Kluge dispenses lively gems of wisdom about the writing process itself while sprinkling the narrative with references to contemporary culture, giving the story a worthwhile bounce. Recommended." - Library Journal

P.F. Kluge, author of GONE TOMORROW and EDDIE AND THE CRUISERS, Profiled in Columbus Dispatch

P.F. Kluge, author of Eddie and the Cruisers, Biggest Elvis, and the forthcoming Gone Tomorrow (Fall 2008) was recently profiled by Joe Blundo of the Columbus Dispatch. Novelist, journalist, and teacher, Kluge is writer in residence at Kenyon College.

His new novel, Gone Tomorrow, received this notice from Publishers Weekly: "In Kluge’s thoughtful new novel, Mark May, a young professor at an Ohio college, is surprised to be named the literary executor of a recently deceased colleague he barely knew. George Canaris was a literary sensation in the 1960s, but hadn’t published anything in 30 years. At the time of his death, he was rumored to be working on his magnum opus, but there is doubt the manuscript exists. While inspecting the dead man’s house, Mark finds the manuscript of Canaris’s memoir, which provides insight into the man and his work, and even if Mark has doubts about its veracity, it pushes him to arrive at some important decisions about his own life. The novel is suffused with Kluge’s obvious affection for books, and has some cleverly aphoristic things to say about the joys of teaching, the pitfalls of academic infighting and the tragedy of artistic expectations left unfulfilled."