Musical fiction is a genre of fiction in which music is paramount: both as subject matter, and through the rhythm and flow of the prose; that is, music is manifested through the language itself.
Notable authors who have written novels of musical fiction include
Don DeLillo (''Great Jones Street''),
Tom Perotta
Tom or TOM may refer to:
* Tom (given name), a diminutive of Thomas or Tomás or an independent Aramaic given name (and a list of people with the name)
Characters
* Tom Anderson, a character in ''Beavis and Butt-Head''
* Tom Beck, a character ...
(''The Wishbones''),
Lewis Shiner
Lewis Shiner (born December 30, 1950 in Eugene, Oregon) is an American writer.
Shiner began his career as a science fiction writer, and then identified with cyberpunk. He later wrote more mainstream novels, albeit often with magical realism and ...
(''Glimpses''),
Roddy Doyle
Roddy Doyle (born 8 May 1958) is an Irish novelist, dramatist and screenwriter. He is the author of eleven novels for adults, eight books for children, seven plays and screenplays, and dozens of short stories. Several of his books have been ma ...
(''The Commitments''),
Robert Dunn (''Pink Cadillac''),
Nick Hornby
Nicholas Peter John Hornby (born 17 April 1957) is an English writer and lyricist. He is best known for his memoir '' Fever Pitch'' and novels '' High Fidelity'' and '' About a Boy'', all of which were adapted into feature films. Hornby's work ...
(''High Fidelity''),
Ibi Kaslik (''The Angel Riots''),
Scott Spencer (''The Rich Man's Table''), Brian Paone (''Yours Truly, 2095''), and Randy Blazak (''The Mission of the Sacred Heart'').
Description
In her anthology The Best of Rock Fiction, editor June Skinner Sawyers writes, “Rock fiction has not received the proper respect it deserves, which is unfortunate given the caliber of writers who have captured its fleeting essence on the written page.”
In the same anthology, Rolling Stone writer Anthony DeCurtis talks about “the edgy relationship” between music and the written word. “Words are long-standing symbols of permanence. Music ultimately is ephemeral, evaporating into your unreliable memory once you’ve heard it. In taking music as their inspiration, writers seek to capture some of that immediacy, that spirit of the moment, and hold it still for their reader’s pleasure.”
[Sawyers, June Skinner (Ed.) (2005). ''The Best in Rock Fiction.'' Milwaukee: Hal Leonard, pp. xii-xiv.]
Further reading
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See also
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Coral Press, publisher of musical fiction
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Genre fiction
Genre fiction, also known as popular fiction, is a term used in the book-trade for fictional works written with the intent of fitting into a specific literary genre, in order to appeal to readers and fans already familiar with that genre.
A nu ...
References
{{reflist
Fiction by genre
Musical culture