Talking Heads: 77 (2003)

I was attracted to John Domini’s first novel by its faithful reproduction of the title of the first Talking Heads album, preserving the eccentric punctuation intact—one colon, no apostrophe. It turns out to be a story about the alternative press in Boston in the late 1970s. There’s some talk about Talking Heads and that album, but not much. I know Jerry Harrison went to Harvard and played with the original Modern Lovers, which is maybe as close to Boston as he got. Punk-rock is a continuing theme in this novel, though not particularly a main one and, for that matter, and not to split rock critic hairs, but Talking Heads is closer to new wave and/or postpunk than to punk-rock. “Talking heads” as a media style also gets its allusions here. There is even the cardinal sin of attaching the definite article to the band’s name—“the” Talking Heads. The name of this band is Talking Heads, as one of their album titles spells out so clearly. I have some interest in Domini’s era of alternative press, as I worked it myself for much of the 1980s. The story here involves a hapless editor and investigative reporter who is looking into corruption in the Massachusetts prison system and trying to keep his paper going at the same time. There are many references to the 1977 movie Between the Lines, which features an alternative newsweekly with Jeff Goldblum as its rock critic. There is also a kinda sorta rock critic on the staff of the paper here. She talks a lot about punk-rock and “the scene” but never makes much sense. She is the daughter of the paper’s money man so maybe she’s meant to be “nepo” and not much good as a writer. When I looked this novel up on Goodreads I saw it has a lot of five-star rankings and reviews. I thought it was a terrible mess and a slog to get through—two stars. It had very little about Talking Heads or their album, and what there was seemed only dimly aware of them. Domini seems more to be talking about an album that exists as some kind of idea in his head, and not the actual album. I appreciated the effort to do the alternative press, especially in the era it focuses on, but Domini doesn’t make much of a job of it. You’re better off tracking down Between the Lines, which I don’t remember as great but certainly it’s more entertaining than this trying-too-hard exercise. I hope Domini got better, but I would need more encouragement from somewhere to look into it myself.

In case the library is closed due to pandemic, which is over.