Soft Rock

by Dan DeWeese

After the appearance of YouTube but before the invention of smartphones, a disconsolate young writer hears, from an apartment window, a soft rock song from his youth. He decides identifying and owning the song will transform him into the confident man he needs to be in order to complete his manuscript on the relationship between Heian-era Japan and the 1967 Ice Bowl, but his frustrated search drives him to acts of desperation and, ultimately, madness. Starting in the mode of 1960s hysterical realism, Soft Rock becomes a meditation on delusion, mortality, and the enduring power of high-quality analog stereo systems.

88 pages, Paperback

Published September 5, 2023

Reviews

[Steve Ellerhoff · Rating 5 out of 5]

This longform original from Propeller Books is a real hoot. Novella-length at eighty pages, it sports a voice that made me chortle and shake my head as I read. The narrator is as deluded as any of us are in this day and age -- and obsessive. There's at least one casualty to his neurotic doggedness, but he's more foolish than cruel. The lengths this guy goes to to identify a soft rock song that he thinks can set his life aright are ridiculous and funny and human. This is a tight, economical narrative of one man looking back on his (at times criminal) efforts to cure the ennui of the first quarter of the twenty-first century. Dan DeWeese revels in the silly, awkward interactions the narrator has with practically everyone he meets -- one of my favorites is his visit with Professor Kellogg, which takes the piss out of academics old and burgeoning in the sliest ways. Oh, it's also a great Portland book -- another literary text mapping out the City of Roses. Highly recommended. So good I just ordered a copy for a friend.

[angel ☆*:.｡. · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was truly silly. The lengths they went through to find the song that soft-rock song will forever be questionable. I will admit. Crazy and ridiculous? Yes, but who knew it would turn out like that? I wish the book was longer but at the same time I felt like it ended right. (maybe it was because I wanted to know it all played out when he got caught.)

[Mary · Rating 5 out of 5]

Unsettling and funny. The novella form is perfect for this scary yet sympathetic protagonist and his obsessions. Hysterical realism-- it's a thing!

[Hein Matthew Hattie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Five stars. A subtle book with a great ending for subtle people with great rear ends. Is this what they mean by "a writer's writer?" I think I like it.