Moody Food - Ray Robertson
Product Details:
Paperback: 400 pages
ISBN: 9780977679904
Cover Design and Photo: Bill Douglas @ The Bang Studio
About the Book:
Inspired by the exploits of ill-fated country-rock visionary Gram Parsons, this mid-60s tale of idealism and escape traces the trials of a fictionalized draft-dodging flower child from the United States to Canada and back. It is the late 1960s in Yorkville, Toronto’s hippie ghetto of artists, intellectuals, drunken poets, and would-be rock stars. In this idyllic haven, narrator Bill Hansen, a drummer, meets Thomas Graham, an American musician on the lam from the draft. The two form a band, but even as they revel in music and freedom, Graham is hobbled by another love: a drug habit that becomes his reason for living and, eventually, for dying. Graham’s emotional trip and failed, revolutionary life reflect the rise and fall of an entire generation’s aspirations.
About the Author:
Ray Robertson is the author of the novels Home Movies, Heroes, Moody Food, and Gently Down the Stream, the latter two of which were both voted Best Books of The Year by the Globe and Mail, as well as Mental Hygiene: Essays on Writers and Writing. He graduated from the University of Toronto with High Distinction in philosophy, and later gained an M.F.A. in creative writing from Southwest Texas State University. He is a Contributing Reviewer to the Globe and Mail and appears frequently on TVO's Imprint and CBC's Talking Books. He lives in Toronto.
“An engrossing novel, beautifully written.”
“This is poetic writing, spare and deep, that unashamedly plumbs the depths of the solitary heart as it is pried open to learn that “it is in feasting on the unknown that we come to know ourselves.”
“A funny, generous, touching novel by a writer of genuine gifts.”
“Robertson shares a literary wildness with Thomas Wolfe.”
“The real star of Moody Food is the writing, with its displays of sharp humor and deep love of music.”