Camden Joy's hero is writing a quickie bio of rock star Liz Phair, but increasingly finds himself recounting his own troubled life. His ex-girlfriend (possibly Brian Jones's illegitimate daughter); Liz Phair (whom he's never met); and a mystery girl in an old photo all start to blur together. Joy's novel is a witty and cogent meditation on celebrity and obsession. "The Last Rock Star Book traces the downward spiral of a morally suspect slacker, also named Camden Joy. Following an unwanted break-up with his girlfriend, the lovably dizzy Shaleese (who believes her father was Rolling Stones bad-boy Brian Jones), Camden is hired by schlock publisher Gabriel Snell to write a quickie "where is she now?" bio of Phair.... Daunted both by the assignment and his going-nowhere life in Iowa--vividly portrayed in hilarious yet poignant flashback scenes of teenage sex, drugs, rock and roll, and petty crime--Camden grows increasingly obsessed with Phair's music. Acting out of desperate bravado, Camden steals his landlady's car and journeys to Chicago to confront Phair and his own personal demons. [Joy's] casually complex musings on identity, fame, and art are fueled by the visceral kick and emotional wallop of great rock music." -- Detour Magazine, September 1998 Guerrilla writer Camden Joy first attracted notice for the "manifestoes" on popular music and culture he pasted up all over New York City (later collected in "The Lost Manifestoes of Camden Joy"), and for his "tracts," including "The Greatest Record Album Ever Told." Okay, I'm back. Now I've rewound and this works. So. How should I begin? I consult the Pocket Secretary 21 User Guide and it tells me, *slide the one-button control fully upward and talk directly into the microphone. Ambient noise will be reduced proportionally to the distance at which the microphone is held.* Let's see. This morning I received a phone call from an older guy named Gabriel Snell. He was calling from Florida, on a cell phone. He asked me to call him Gabe. Highway sounds came across the phone, rushing wind (the winds of Florida), brakes, swerves, decelerations. He explained that he puts out music-celebrity profiles, his particular expertise being picture books about ill-fated pop celebrities who have vanished or met with bad ends. Gabe was quite frank about his motives. He said he has cared nothing for popular music since Elvis got inducted into the army. His only interest in modern music is how often its silly dramas provide "a ripe market." For reasons too numerous for Gabe to list, there is presently such turnover of rock celebrities as to guarantee at least six individuals per year on whom he can commission profitable quickie where-are-they-now?-style biographies. He explained his formula for determining which faces deserve a bio, but I have to say that like most marketing lingo his formula escaped me. I stopped listening, as I am apt to do, and spaced for a time, and when I tuned back in mention was being made of logarithmically deducting demographics from an "optimal franchise base" to calculate a "percentile of controversy," and all the polls you'd expect, and the stuff about sales having once approached 300,000 units and the hint of a hit single. Gabe admitted he hadnt noticed Liz Phair when she was around, but he felt some people must have, from surveys hed consulted, and they might be wondering where she had gone. Thus, Liz Phair was "ripe" for the Gabe Snell treatment. At the same time, he was nervous the memory of Liz Phair's career could disappear any minute. He had once published a very well written book about a similar young female singer/songwriter named Laura Nyro who at one time was expected to accomplish great things, but never did. But Gabe had been too cocky and had waited too long, waited until she'd completely fallen out of sight before he commissioned the bio, and nearly lost his shirt in the lack of interest the book stirred. When I told him I'd once owned a copy of that book and had quite liked it, he seemed genuinely surprised. He said his failure to profit from the Nyro book taught him two things: run lots of photos and hurry it into print. "Don't wait till the body's cold," was how he put it. If he had included more snapshots and gotten out the Nyro book when the market indicators were "lit," then he might have made some money. Instead, since Laura Nyro had sunk from memory, all his book could do was go down after her. Having spotted my name in a pile of press clippings on budding rock writers, Gabe hastily decided to commission me to dictate a book about Liz Phair and where she is now. I protested that I was no rock critic, that whole rap was a mistake. I had been a little sick in the head and had taken to writing things on the walls of big cities, and publishers had turned around and published what I'd written. I didn't know enough rock criticism to fill a pair of shoes, much less a whole book. I was mostly a musician. "But you're familiar," he drama