Artificial Light

by James Greer, Pamela Taylor (Editor), Dennis Cooper (Editor)

"In 1994, a young woman named Fiat Lux donates twenty-one notebooks full of her writings to a university library and then disappears. It's only later that her close relationship with a well-known rock musician who had recently committed suicide is discovered, and the notebooks' contents become the subject of growing fascination, conjecture, and gossip. Intending to satisfy the public's insatiable curiosity about the rock star and throw light on the author's rumored involvement in his now infamous death, and, more importantly, hoping to make a case for her remarkable writings as a work of literature, the university's press has decided to publish her notebooks in a single volume under the title she had given them, Artificial Light." Set in the mythological land of Dayton, Ohio, Artificial Light is part-historical novel, part-science fiction, part-sociological study, part-murder mystery. Artificial Light may be the first American novel to treat the alternative rock scene of the 1990s as a subject for serious literature.

Genres: Fiction, Music

337 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 1, 2006

About the author

James Greer is a novelist, screenwriter, musician and critic. He was born in Portland, ME on April 23 1971. As a screenwriter, he's written UNSANE (directed by Steven Soderbergh, starring Clare Foy and Juno Temple) and many other films and TV series. As a novelist, he's written BAD EMINENCE, THE FAILURE, and ARTIFICIAL LIGHT. He's also written books about R.E.M. and Guided By Voices (a band for which he played bass guitar in the mid-90s), the short fiction collection EVERYTHING FLOWS, and was Senior Editor of SPIN Magazine in its early 90s heyday. He lives in Los Angeles.

Reviews

[Meagan]

"What an odd, beautiful book," the guy at the Mercer Street Books counter remarked when I bought it. I should mention that I bought this book after I'd already read half of it, in a copy I borrowed from the library. When it became clear that I was dogearing too many favorite pages to return it in good faith, I figured I'd better buy my own. It's one of the most haunting things I've read lately, haunting in a good way, like a foggy night...I'm not sure how to sum it up, except that it's sort of an angular, Nabokovian tale of, well, 1990s alt-rock. And yet it's not as pretentious as that sounds...I'm not doing too good a job of selling this, am I? Well, look, if you've ever been in a band, or in a bar, or had friends in bands, or in bars, you might enjoy this book. If you find yourself still prowling the used record/CD bins in search of that perfect sound, you might enjoy this book. It's a hell of a thing, and I dug it intensely. (And I'm not just saying that because its author was in G---- B- V----, either.)

[Leanda]

Give this book a chance. It's pretty interesting. Unlike this review.

[seda]

3,5
"bir evin pencereleri, ruhun dünyayı algıladığı, gördüğü ya da açımladığı yerdir ve dünya da, gördüğüm kadarıyla, dönüp ona bakar. bir insanın hayatındaki en korkutucu anlar, dünyanın ona baktığını göremediği ya da görecek ya da görülecek bir dünya olmadığı sanısına kapıldıklarıdır."

[Kenan Toprak]

Önce kitaba yapılan yorumları okudum. Çoğu olumsuz yöndeydi. Buna rağmen aldım kitabı. Her insana ait olan duygular, iç sesler ve sağır hayatların konu aldığı bu kitaptan bu kadar etkileneceğimi tahmin etmezdim. Açıkçası bende herkes gibi bu kitabı Kurt Cobain'i daha iyi tanımak ve intihar sebebine giden yolu bulmak için almadım da değil. Fakat sırf Kurt Cobain ile kalmayıp başka hayatların, suskun ama çığlık atan bedenleri tanımama sebep oldu. Kimi sayfaları gözlerim dolarak okudum, kimi sayfaları sırıtarak.. Bu hayatın düzenine yeter demek için. Yahut bunu başaramayıp içmek için. En azından unutarak.


Bunlarla birlikte aradığım cevabı da buldum. Kurt'u biz öldürdük!

[Zach Werbalowsky]

Dang this book had a lot goin on. Solid prose and fun story exploring a range of topics. Why does goodreads have such lil love for this gem?

[J.F. Ramirez]

Strange and broken. Dreamlike in many ways, yet constantly searching for a hint of some truth, whether rooted in actual fact, or in what the narrator perceives as fact. There is the cliched sense of writing towards a more universal truth from the point of view of the truly mundane.

At approximately 330 pages, it's a slightly over-written, and Greer sometimes waxes poetic far too much in character monologues that don't seem entirely real. However, I liked the book, and I think it was well put together and the right intention was present when building it. But the idea of this book is, in my mind, far better then the execution of it. I think the same story could have been told in less than 200 pages.

[diePoesie]

i had serious doubts before reading this book,since it is about Kurt Cobain. so it was hard for me to get into the book ,at first. but as i read i was attached to it. and i find it pretty interesting .it worths every minute of your reading.i love this book and i highly recommend it to people who love Kurt Cobain.

[Esma]

Ben Kurt'e aşığım. Cidden. Keşin teki olmasına rağmen filozof.

Kitabın sonunu pek anlamadım ama Fiat Lux denen kızın Courtney Love olduğunu düşünüyorum. Belki de değildir bilmiyorum. Zaten önemi de yok.

[Candace]

early-nineties-era guilty pleasure.

[Canberk Yesilada]

Akılda kalıcı ve düşündürücü bir kitaptı. Aklımda hala birçok soru var.

[Ayşe]

hayat narindir ve hayat narindir....

[Neva]

Ah Kurt Cobain. Ölmen ne acı!

[angelica ꒰ᐢ. .ᐢ꒱₊˚⊹]

9. sinifta kurt cobain askima yenik dusup almistim

[Elif Muratoğlu]

...1913 selinde çok fazla insanın (ne kadar doğru olduğunu bilmiyorum ama benim yaşımda çok ta fark etmiyor) öldüğünü sanmıyorum. Daha çok mala zarar getiren bir felaket ya da Tanrı'nın lanetiydi. Tanrı'nın böylesi bir şiddet eylemine girişmesi anlaşılır gibi değil. İnsanlar yeterince yıkıcı zaten, dışarıdan yardıma ihtiyaçları yook. Yaşadığım süre boyunca dünyadaki mezarları iki katına çıkaracak kadar çok zarar verdik. Nükte yapıyorum. Kendim nüktelere kaptırmamalıyım...

[Nicole]

I struggled to get through this book for quite some time, but pressed on because the author is a very lovely person whom I had the pleasure of meeting. It's a very interesting book, but moves a bit slowly at times. I enjoyed the grungy, 90's setting and characters, and enjoyed the feeling of watching the character's lives unfold and fall apart (respectively).

[Juliet Fromholt]

I read this book on an airplane from the mythological land of Dayton, Ohio to Los Angeles and positively devoured it. It was one of those great, surprising books where the author slowly hooks you before you realize what's happening.

[Debesuota]

Kurt'dan nerede bahsedecek diye 50'lere kadar geldim ama bir yere kadar.Sonra dayanamadım.Yazar Kurt'dan çok kendinden bahsetmiş.Katlanamadım ve yarım bıraktım artık.Şu birkaç yıl içinde de tekrar okumaya cesaret edebileceğimi sanmıyorum.

[Tuck]

this has uneven likes and dislikes, but i think is a great novel about disaffection and music in the '90's. hell, the naughts too for that matter.

[Tony Laplume]

I think Greer bit off a little more than he could chew, and made a fairly simple premise much more complicated than it needed to be, no matter how literary he wanted to be about it...