The New Music Record Guide

Arts & Photography

Robbins, Ira

Music

Omnibus Press

What do radicals, religion, race, riots, restaurants and Rufus Thomas all have in common? According to this provocative first novel by veteran music journalist Ira Robbins, they are all defining elements of the 1960s. At times dishearteningly bleak, Kick It Till It Breaks is rich with offbeat characters vividly drawn against a tableau of antiwar violence. Unlike most stories of the time, the author - who nonetheless claims a high regard for its political and cultural achievements - is unsparing in his depiction of dedicated idealists failing to uphold their ideals. The author uses slang, dialect and timely pop culture touchstones to bring the Viet Nam era to life in such disparate locales as Memphis, London, Los Angeles, Washington D.C., San Francisco, Chicago and New York. Fans of Putney Swope, The Young Ones and A Confederacy of Dunces will likely recognize a harmony of tone and perspective with those darkly humorous works.

Kick It Till It Breaks

Literature & Fiction

Contemporary

Trouser Press, LLC

<p>In his first novel, veteran music journalist Ira Robbins satirizes the foibles and fanaticism of '60s radicalism. The dark humor of Kick It Till It Breaks is tempered by affection and respect for those who devoted themselves to ending the war in Viet Nam. Ydinia Ochreman is the leader of the Plumbers, a pre-Watergate organization engaged in watery terrorism; her travels and exploits shape the story, which involves a colorful cast of dubious characters, including the incompetent FBI agent on her trail, a pacifist protest leader with a complicated agenda, a cranky peg-legged bar owner, an Irish atheist on a quest to end organized religion whose son kills people for it and a confused loser from Memphis who gets lost in London and finally finds a way to live. Rich with period detail, slang and settings, Kick It Till It Breaks is both a fond epic of long-ago times and a stick in the eye of anyone with too idealized a recollection of the era.</p>

Kick It Till It Breaks: A belated novel of the 1960s

Literary

Trouser Press Books

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