Mid-Life Confidential: 2the Rock Bottom Remainders Tour America with Three Chords and an Attitude

The Rock Bottom Remainders, a group of celebrated writers smitten with rock 'n' roll glamour, gladly submitted when independent publicist Kathi Karmen Goldmark conceived the idea of forming a literary rock band to perform at the 1992 American Booksellers Association convention in Anaheim. The band members--including Dave Barry, Matt Groening, Stephen King, Barbara Kingsolver and Amy Tan--had so much fun with that gig that they decided to take their show on the road, playing clubs from Boston to Miami on a jaunt financed by the advance on this book. Each writer/rocker contributed an article on ``what being in a band has meant to me.'' Their various musings, ranging from the comic to the portentous, straddle the line between the charming and the pompous. The Remainders lapse at times into cliches and stereotypes--i.e., that ``real'' rockers are illiterate--which make them sound like frat boys and sorority sisters slumming. But even if this project is nakedly self-indulgent, for the most part it is self-aware. And Barry's and Groening's reflections are better than that--hilarious. (Aug.)