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The mystery of an academic novel-within-a-novel.

Jan 19, 2009, Vol. 14, No. 17 • By DAVID SKINNER
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Gone Tomorrow

by P.F. Kluge

Overlook, 368 pp., $25.95

So you write a novel, a story about writing and writers in which you play off the personal quirks and literary indulgences of various brand names in American literature. With little malice and some justification, you get out your toy gun and take aim at (among others) a younger writer famous for a zealously intellectual, pop-culture-splashed, and indulgently long novel. And just as your toy gun is about to go bang, with its little flag unfurling, one of the very real writers at whom your weapon is pointed goes and commits suicide.

A period of mourning is underway, with problematic timing, just as your novel comes out. Ugh.

P.F. Kluge is an accomplished writer with a number of good books under his belt. Eddie and the Cruisers, which is being reissued by Overlook Press, is a delicate work about the jagged soul of rock 'n' roll music and the type of introverted writer who wants nothing more than to be its amanuensis. Biggest Elvis was another rock 'n' roll novel, an often riveting take on the U.S. military pullout from the Philippines, the exporting of American culture, and the adrenaline rush of stage performance.

So Kluge remains affectionate toward the pop culture of his youth, but he has filed more than a few complaints about the kids of today. A professor who teaches writing and postwar American literature at Kenyon, he's used his perch in Gambier, Ohio, to observe and criticize the coddled American college student, whom he suggests would be much better off if his behind were kissed less often by administrators with dollar signs in their eyes and U.S. News & World Report rankings where their hearts used to be.

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