Adrianne Geffel A Fiction

A poignant and hilarious oral history of a (fictitious) musical phenomenon. Praise for David Hajdu: Love for Sale: Pop Music in America "Easy to devour for anyone who still feels a pang of nostalgia or despair when walking past a bank branch where a record store used to be." – The New York Times Book Review "Essential reading for anyone interested in popular music, but is worth reading simply for the pleasure of its deft and lucid prose." – Times Literary Supplement Positively 4th Street: The Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Fariña, and Richard Fariña Winner of the ASCAP–Deems Taylor Award Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award "A hauntingly evocative blend of biography, musicology, and pop culture history." – Janet Maslin, The New York Times "In a teetering stack of Dylan biographies and commentaries, [this is] the one new publication of distinction and clarity." – David Remnick, The New Yorker Lush Life: A Biography of Billy Strayhorn Winner of the ASCAP–Deems Taylor Award Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award "One of the finest of jazz biographies." – Will Friedwald, The New York Times Book Review "A portrait that is both full and convincing…It is a mark of the excellence of this biography that it leaves one wanting nothing so much as to listen to the music." – Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post Book Review Adrianne Geffel was a genius. Praised as the “Geyser of Grand Street” and the “Queen of Bleak Chic,” she was a one-of-a-kind artist, a pianist and composer with a rare neurological condition that enabled her to make music that was nothing less than pure, unmediated emotional expression. She and her sensibility are now fully integrated into the cultural lexicon; her music has been portrayed, represented, and appropriated endlessly in popular culture. But what do we really know about her? Despite her renown, Adrianne Geffel vanished from public life, and her whereabouts remain a mystery to this day. David Hajdu cuts through the noise to tell, for the first time, the full story of Geffel’s life and work, piecing it together through the memories of those who knew her, inspired her, and exploited her—her parents, teachers, best friend, manager, critics, and lovers. Adrianne Geffel made music so strange, so compelling, so utterly unique that it is simply not to be believed. Hajdu has us believing every note of it in this slyly entertaining work of fiction. A brilliantly funny satire, with characters that leap off the page, Adrianne Geffel is a vividly twisted evocation of the New York City avant-garde of the 1970s and ’80s, and a strangely moving portrait of a world both utterly familiar and like none we’ve ever encountered.