[2009-02-10] The Rolling Stones "Sway: A Novel" paperback book by Zachary Lazar

Linda · **Posted:** Sun Dec 28, 2008 2:18 pm

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. As Mick Jagger sang in the 1970 song Sway, "It's just that demon life has got me in its sway." In Lazar's second novel, he uses a number of real demon lives from the '60s—the Stones and their entourage; Kenneth Anger, the filmmaker who shot Scorpio Rising; and Bobby Beausoleil, a musician and Manson family associate—to channel the era's dread and exhilaration. Lazar shows the decade's descent as the culture of youth (represented most clearly by the Rolling Stones as icons of swinging London) responds to assassinations, the war in Vietnam, the repression in Czechoslovakia and the shedding of naïveté about drugs. Lazar sketches out his narrative through discrete episodes: Bobby's first criminal job with Manson; Anger's filming of Scorpio Rising; the breakup of Anita Pallenberg and Brian Jones; and a series of Anger's failed film projects. Anger serves as the narrative's lynchpin, and Lazar could have easily cast him as a tawdry caricature, but to his credit, Lazar understands that, in the '60s, the marginal was central, and he brilliantly highlights the fragility of an era when everyone under thirty has decided that they're an exception—a musician, a runaway, an artist, a star. (Jan.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Bookmarks Magazine
Zachary Lazar, who took his title from the Keith Richards song of the same name on the Sticky Fingers album, was an infant in the closing years of the 1960s. He therefore writes from copious research rather than memory, but the novel seems to be the appropriate form for his story. Several critics expressed surprise that there could be anything new to say about the overanalyzed decade, but with the exception of the Toronto Star, they agreed that Lazar offers fresh insight into the era’s more ominous undercurrents. Critics praised his vivid, sparkling prose and his success in depicting characters already so well known, as he strips them bare of myth and legend and renders them completely human. “Lazar makes the atmosphere of a decade almost palpable,” claims the Boston Globe, and readers just may forget that Sway is a work of fiction. Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0316113115/?tag=imwan-20

Z phage · **Joined:** 10 Dec 2006 **Posts:** 247

This is a good book, that captures a certain time. With more development it could been a great book.

[2009-02-10] The Rolling Stones "Sway: A Novel" paperback book by Zachary Lazar

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