Ric Browde - While I'm Dead ... Feed The Dog

For a producer, Ric Browde isn't a bad novellist. The uncredited statement on his book's cover that it's for 'everyone who wished JD Salinger had had a sense of humour' is over-egging him somewhat though (and is also misleading, the 'had had' seemingly suggesting Salinger was already dead when the edition I have was published in 2000).

Described as 'totally autobiographical except for all the bits where I lied', While I'm Dead...Feed the Dog centres around Ric Thibault, smalltown Missouri teenager who finds his mother has taken an overdose and left numerous suicide notes, including one that requests her family adhere to one request that provides the book's title. The note left for Ric reveals his mother's awareness that he's been sleeping with their neighbour (both his mother's best friend and his best friend's mother), prompting a swift recap on recent events that see Ric move from 'twentieth century Vestral Virgin' to local sexual hero, via a couple of David Bowie groupies (an in an oral flash Bowie himself goes from an artist Ric 'can't stand' to his 'favourite rock & roll star of all-time').

With new found confidence Ric finally approaches the much desired Nina Pennington for a date - somewhat exagerating his closeness to the Thin White Duke - and the spiral of lies that prop up the book begins. Gradually Browde introduces a mafia connection, who present Ric with a Corvette courtesy car following an accident involving some nuns (indeed, it's courtesy of the Church), an inept local Police force at war with the media, a struggling up-and-not-coming band that see Ric as their ticket to fame and fortune, various liaisons (often in the Corvette, as predicted by mafiosa Salvatore Veneruzzo) and after a while there is so much going on - oh, several dead Latin teachers as well - that Browde does struggle slightly to being everything back together again.

Definitely a rock & roll curio, and I'm almost prepared to forgive him for encouraging the Dogs D'Amour to re-record 'Heroine' on Straight, a version only rendered less pointless when the Wildhearts got hold of the song on Endless Nameless.

Currently reading: Alvin Gibbs - Neighbourhood Threat: On Tour With Iggy Pop




Previous posts:
Flies On Fire
Smashed Gladys - Social Intercourse
Faster Pussycat - self-titled