I picked this book up for a song...I picked up Shadowbahn once, shortly after its publication, then put it down again. The brief synopsis on its jacket put me off: Manhattan's Twin Towers, destroyed on September 11, 2001, inexplicably reappear in the Badlands of South Dakota some twenty years later? Too soon, too soon... I did not want to be reminded yet again of just how badly and how often we've stumbled since those planes were flown into those buildings.But that was before I had read Steve Er...

…the music became inextricable from the paroxysms of his country. Did his country lead him to the music or did the music lead him to his country?i was so excited a few months back to hear that steve erickson had a new book coming out, and so titillated by jonathan lethem's saying of it, in granta (wayyy back in december 2015):It’s my best of the year, but you can’t read it yet...I’ve read every novel he’s ever written and I’ll still never know how he does it; Erickson’s not so much a writer’s wr...

This was a brilliant collage of short narratives on America as ephemeral dreamscape and one man’s attempt to envision and incarnate its essence by songscape. The structure of the assembly mostly involves the twining of three strands connected by interfaces with the crystalizing event of the 9/11 devastation. The sudden appearance of the Twin Towers in the Badlands in a near future 20 years after 9/11 captures the attention of millions. The buildings are empty except for Jesse Presley, who emerge...

Did not finish, gave up at 47%. Couldn’t get into it, although the premise is so interesting. However, the very short chapters – one on every page – the intertwined and disjointed threads made it hard for me to get into it or care about what’s going on. The musical references – one every two or so sentences – were way too many for me. And Presley’s stillborn twin made no sense in the narrative. Could be the fact that I’m not an American and maybe there are some nuances to it I didn’t get; even s...

I am not even going to pretend the premise isn’t crazy. Twenty years after they fell, the Twin Towers reappear in South Dakota. They are as they were before 9/11…except they seem to be singing and they are also completely devoid of people, save one: Jesse Garon Presley, the twin brother of Elvis (who, in our reality, died at birth). I KNOW, RIGHT?! It’s bonkers. But more than just a bananapants premise, it’s a gorgeous novel of loss and alternate history deeply tied into American culture. I was

Boy, I didn't like this book. The first...half, I'd say it was a strong 3 stars--towers, mystery, bro/sis driving toward it, their story was really compelling. Then at approximately the halfway point, the book...devolved? It became of series of semi-cohesive ideas and mad ramblings about music that came across like your local record seller on a meth high laying out ultimate mix without using names of artists or songs. Then it wrapped up. Frankly, a book only about brother and sister woulda been

Premise: the Twin Towers mysteriously appear on the Badlands of South Dakota, from them comes a stream of music, and everyone hears a different song. Isn’t that a cool idea? I thought so when I requested a review copy. I imagined something of the order of a Tim Powers novel, with flights of wacky imagination resolving into a story that moves me, with characters I care about. Alas, it turned out that I was exactly the wrong reader for this book. Reviews, even “not my cup of tea” style, can help r...

So what to make of Steve Erickson’s Shadowbahn. It’s already been described as the first post-Trump novel, which is a tad ironic given the President – not named – in Erickson’s near future (the book is set in 2021) is female and it’s under this female President (look, we know it’s Hillary) that America fractures into a “disunion”. Not even Erickson, for all the weirdness that occurs in Shadowbahn, could imagine a Trump Presidency. That said, he has no difficulty describing a broken America.And t...

"There's music coming out of me that's not mine. There's singing in my head that's not me."This was my first exposure to Steve Erickson, astonishing given that the author has nine previous novels and has won both a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Lannan Lifetime Achievement Award. I'm not so enamored of his method that I'll immediately hunt down the other nine novels, but Shadowbahn represents such an odd representation of 21st-century America, I'll be trying to figure out what his visions mean for

Serving as a meta-text on the American 21st century, Erickson severs the country into Union and Disunion, into alternate history and future, into the rich history of song that's constantly performed over and over. And drenched in his iconic, crepuscular prose, the dystopic vision he paints is rendered into subtle beauty where metaphor is the guiding principal for understanding everything.In fact, when the writer-character in the novel says that "Everything that every writer writes is about every...

An excellent 9/11 novel, both in premise and execution. Probably the finest I've read, although Bleeding Edge still sits high on my TBR pile. Shadowbahn is absolutely bizarre and certainly strong enough to have me looking into Erickson's other works. I have a feeling I'll be checking out Zeroville soon enough. If that is as jam packed with deep insights into film as this one has into music (and American culture in general) Erickson will officially have a new fan.

What better bridge to help us explore the concept of parallel universes than an identical twin? In that context we are our own twin, living a life with echoes of what might have been. This novel creates gossamer fine veils through which these other possible worlds can be seen and, especially through music, heard. 20th century America, in full dayglo potential and missed opportunity is sifted and sounded, creating frequencies that set the reader vibrating.

Plot? Yeah, Shadowbahn's got one, sort of. But that's not why you'd pick up this book, and if it is, you'd probably put it back down, quick. No, what it's got--and the real reason you'd choose to read it--is that it's got knockout writing in the service of something that feels important. Erickson gathers together the USA's two original sins, neither ever adequately addressed by this country--the genocide of indigenous peoples and the enslavement of Africans--along with the horror of 9/11 and the...

Shadowbahn is the kind of science-fiction novel where nothing is explained and you're often not sure exactly what's going on. The Twin Towers reappear in the Badlands of South Dakota, Elvis's still-born twin spins off a parallel universe where the Beatles never existed, music disappears, and some kids go on a road trip. The prose is sparse, echoing the empty stretches of American highway where most of its action takes place. The book is more about an experience and a feeling than a plot.And that...

The premise of Shadowbahn is a strange one; 20 years after 9/11 the Twin Towers appear in the badlands of South Dakota. It’s not a mirage, but the physical buildings, bereft of people and completely undamaged. The novel offers no direct explanation of how or why this occurred but rather its effect on time and on other people. One of those is Jesse Garon Presley, Elvis’s twin brother and whom, in our world, died at birth. Two others are Parker and his adopted black sister Zema who, in a reversal

Shadowbahn is a novel that is of course necessarily incongruous, hallucinatory, disturbing; a nervous parity of anxiety and obsession written in the age of trumpism. it concerns the spectacle of national tragedy, the legacy of American sound, and a deconstruction of the madness in identifying as an American to begin with. thematically, narratively, and structurally, this novel announces itself as a harbinger of literature that will extend into the next decade.