Orf

by David Meltzer

HYSTERIA, VIOLENCE, LUST—ORF IS WHERE IT'S AT!
The audience of young, turned-on teenagers are going mad for Orf. They're screaming like a thousand drowning mice, tearing the place apart…they could eat him alive! They come in their beads, seeds, bone, vinyl flesh, leather, hair, tight tight, wanting—and wanting more. His life is a red swirling mandala of music, love, bad raps, pain and agony. His world is made of fame, money, the adulation of the masses, and he can't slow down or stop. They'll take anything they can get from Orf…crazy singer-god!

David Meltzer has written a taut, powerful novel that strips off the cool from the hip generation to reveal its sordid, desperate underworld, where survival is a matter of selling drugs, sex…and even souls; where the sounds of rock and roll become the cries of unfulfilled desire, a lament for the death of young dreams. Orf is savage, vibrating with the erotic pulse of tormented youth.

160 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1968

About the author

David Meltzer was a poet associated with both the Beat Generation and the San Francisco Renaissance. A pioneer of jazz poetry readings, Meltzer also formed a psychedelic folk-rock group. He performed with the music and poetry review, "Rockpile." He edited many anthologies, including San Francisco Beat: Talking with the Poets (City Lights, 2001), and published 11 erotic novels. He taught for many years in the poetics program at New College of California.