Destroy All Monsters: The Last Rock Novel

by Jeff Jackson Narrated by Sophie Amoss, James Patrick Cronin

Overview

“At some point, I began to think of it as an ancient folk tale. It's fine work, with a kind of scattered narrative set within a tight frame. Fast-moving throughout-fragile characters who suggest a bleak inner world made in their own collective image.” -Don DeLillo

An epidemic of violence is sweeping the country: musicians are being murdered onstage in the middle of their sets by members of their audience. Are these random copycat killings, or is something more sinister at work? Has music itself become corrupted in a culture where everything is available, everybody is a "creative," and attention spans have dwindled to nothing?

With its cast of ambitious bands, yearning fans, and enigmatic killers, Destroy All Monsters tells a haunted and romantic story of overdue endings and unlikely beginnings that will resonate with anybody who's ever loved rock and roll.

Like a classic vinyl single, Destroy All Monsters has two sides, which can be read in either order. At the heart of Side A, “My Dark Ages,” is Xenie, a young woman who is repulsed by the violence of the epidemic but who still finds herself drawn deeper into the mystery. Side B, "Kill City," follows an alternate history, featuring familiar characters in surprising roles, and burrows deeper into the methods and motivations of the murderers.

“Surges with new-century anxiety and paranoia . . . A clear-eyed, stone-cold vision of what's to come.” -Ben Marcus

“Jeff Jackson is one of contemporary American fiction's most sterling and gifted new masters. Destroy All Monsters . . . is a wonder to behold.” -Dennis Cooper

Editorial Reviews

The New York Times Book Review - Marisha Pessl

It is [the] strange and shifting divide between music and listener—rock gods drenched in all that gold light onstage, their faceless fans packed into the darkness, watching them—that Jeff Jackson explores to shattering effect in his wild roar of a novel Destroy All Monsters. By the end, you feel you've emerged from an invitation-only Doors concert, one that starts out with a relatively benign "Love Me Two Times" and ends hours later with Jim Morrison passed out somewhere behind an amp, the band playing a screeching Skrillex remix of "The End" as the audience storms the stage…Writing about music is tricky. Ninety-nine percent of the time hearing the actual song or going to the actual concert is far more revealing than any paragraph describing it. But Jackson pulls off this near-impossible feat, pulling the reader past the velvet ropes into the black-box theaters and sweaty, sticky-floored stadiums…The prose can feel as cool as Rat Pack-era Sinatra and as sad as Lou Reed singing about a perfect day…

Publishers Weekly

★ 08/13/2018
Jackson (Mira Corpora) builds an anxious, deeply felt narrative probing a nationwide epidemic of murders of musicians. In opposing versions of the story—there’s an A side and a B side—Jackson follows several residents of the nondescript city of Arcadia who turn out to be both victims and perpetrators of crimes. Side A finds Xenie, disillusioned with music despite her “mesmerizing” singing voice, and Florian, an anxious yet defiant guitarist, both coping with the murder of Shaun, Xenie’s former boyfriend and Florian’s old best friend. When Florian’s bandmates decide to perform at a concert aimed at reviving the town’s dormant music scene, the opportunity to “pay a worthy and genuine tribute to Shaun,” who was gunned down while performing at a local theater, seems fitting. But as the concert approaches, bringing with it unwelcome reminders of the past, the characters are driven to confront their own twisted relationships to themselves and music itself. Side B switches Shaun and Xenie’s roles as the mourner and dead, and cycles through a dizzying catalogue of musician deaths across the country—gesturing at the murderers’ motivations, including the sense that, ironically, “the killers wanted music to matter again.” Infected with this eerie conceit, and expressed through gritty, sharp prose, the novel provides both deep character exploration and a nuanced commentary on music, creativity, and violence. (Oct.)

From the Publisher

"The scenes of carnage, every one presented plainly, without pumped-up adjectives and gory effects, are absolutely devastating.” —Greil Marcus, Rolling Stone

"[Destroy All Monsters] is a startlingly delightful pop object . . . which diametrically prepares the reader for a novel that is formally complex, experimental, poetic, puzzling, often uncomfortable, at times dizzying, always alive, beautifully written and just plain daring." —Scott Cheshire, Los Angeles Times

"[Jeff] Jackson captures the dynamics of a small-town rock scene and channels the sense of danger that threatens live music, at a time when tragedy strikes those who seek out the sounds they love. This surreal novel summons feelings both hopeful and terrifying, which seems about right for 2018." —Tobias Carroll, Pitchfork

"[Jeff] Jackson builds an anxious, deeply felt narrative probing a nationwide epidemic of murders of musicians . . . Infected with this eerie conceit, and expressed through gritty, sharp prose, [Destroy All Monsters] provides both deep character exploration and a nuanced commentary on music, creativity, and violence." —Publishers Weekly

"Destroy All Monsters rails against its own titular notion—it’s better to create than destroy. Its sharded optimism is a balm for these increasingly fractious times." —Michael T. Fournier, The Chicago Review of Books

"Punk rock in literary form, this activism allegory will draw fans of Chuck Palahniuk’s raw social commentary and Charlie Huston’s haunting, macabre symbolism." —Christine Tran, Booklist

"[Destroy All Monsters] is about you and me. It’s about the time we live in, the times our ancestors lived in. It’s about music. It’s about burning your house down. It’s about facing the gun and being behind it . . . a masterful work by someone I’d dare to call one of the greatest living authors." —Kelby Losack, Vol. 1 Brooklyn

“Destroy All Monsters is an inventive and powerful book, one of the best (if not the best) rock ’n roll novels I have ever read.” —David Gutowski, Largehearted Boy

"Being an outsider is not the exclusive realm of contrarians, as anyone who has ever longed to be a cool kid can attest. Destroy All Monsters taps into this fundamental aspect of the human experience . . . Jackson paints in sepia tones, his words [creating] a filmy, nicotine-stained haze . . ." —Michael J. Solender, PANK

Kirkus Reviews

2018-07-31

With local bands being shot down in seemingly random killings, musicians question their devotion to rock n' roll.

The sophomore novel from Jackson (Mira Corpora, 2013) is a dazed and confused meander through the music scene of the small town of Arcadia in the wake of a series of murders. Our eye into the place is Xenie, a teenage singer with hidden gifts but one who is keeping some dark secrets. "Follow the trail of unused tickets," compels the book, a series of random snapshots of disaffected characters reeling as bands start getting shot midperformance all over the country. After her boyfriend is killed, Xenie goes a little bit crazy. On the edge of unleashing her voice, she stumbles. "But this time, I didn't feel inspired to even move my lips," she says. "The power of music had been steadily disintegrating, and now I realized the remaining scraps had started to curdle....Maybe whatever infected the killers had also infected me." Jackson portrays the motley scene of dive bars, drunken musicians, and punk ethos with a practiced eye, and his prose is linguistically nimble. But there's an emptiness to this experimental novel which comes complete with a Side A and a Side B, two alternate versions of the same story. Not only does the book offer little in the way of resolution, the monotony of the characters makes them virtually interchangeable. Xenie tries to make an argument that these killings are meant to make the music matter again, but the story here argues the opposite, portraying the banality and futility of a dying scene. You can see where Jackson is going, whipping up an indie-influenced modern Singles, but there's just no edge here. As Xenie ultimately learns, "Anybody can open their mouth...and sing a fucking song."

A rock novel that's more DOA than DIY.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940170020713
Publisher:	Brilliance Audio
Publication date:	10/16/2018
Edition description:	Unabridged

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