Having read and enjoyed Mark Edmundson's earlier memoir, TEACHER: THE ONE WHO MADE THE DIFFERENCE, this next installment, THE FINE WISDOM AND PERFECT TEACHINGS OF THE KINGS OF ROCK AND ROLL, with its long (and deceptive) title, sounded intriguing. What I expected, and I am probably not alone in this, was a personalized study of the lyrics of pop songs from Edmundson's youth and how they influenced him and made him who he is today. Nope, or not exactly. The "Kings" of the title do not refer to Elvis or Mick or John & Paul, or any number of rock and roll heroes from the 50s onward that might come to mind. No, the kings Edmundson refers to are the movers and shakers behind the scenes of all those rock concerts, and not even the executive types, but the booking agents, stage crews and security guards - the "boots-on-the-ground" guys who made these events all happen. In particular, one of Edmundson's "king" mentor-heroes was a larger-than-life character he met one night in 1974 at Bennington College. Pelops was a visitor, introduced thusly by a female classmate:

"'Mark,' said Deidre, 'this is my friend Pelops Kazanjian. He's brilliant. You'll interest each other. I have to go to bed.' She dropped Pelops's invisible chain and walked away."

Thus began one of the most influential acquaintanceships of the young Edmundson's life. I don't call it a friendship because Edmundson was always, it seemed, the disciple, the apprentice, while Pelops was the teacher-guide. It was Pelops who got Edmundson jobs working security and stage crew for major concerts in New York City and New Jersey by some of the biggest names in 1970s pop music. A close enounter with an older Grace Slick of the recently renamed Jefferson Starship is only one highlight of those days, which also featured lugging amps and chasing gate crashers at concerts by such luminaries as Pink Floyd and The Grateful Dead. Pelops's main effort, however, is to convert Edmundson to the ways of Engels and Marx, to join the People's revolution. Indeed, Pelops takes on such mythic significance in Edmundson's coming of age that I began to wonder if he was even a real person.

There are other phases in Edmundson's checkered attempts at post-college self-education. He drives a taxi in New York City. He becomes a devotee of Robert Altman films. He does drugs. He moves to Colorado to attend Outward Bound. He's a bouncer in a Massachusetts disco. And, finally, he joins the faculty of the Woodstock Country School in Vermont, an educational holdover from the sixties which brought to mind Robert Rimmer's notorious novel, THE HARRAD EXPERIMENT. There, he casts about for his true place in life, while also enjoying skinny-dipping in Buffy's Pond with his pot-smoking, sexually liberated students.

There is a kind of ornate grandiosity in Edmundson's writing style, coupled with a constant peppering of philosophical and literary allusions, all of which can have the unfortunate effect of keeping his reader always at arm's length. In any case, more than once he made me feel just a bit of a dumbbell. The new headmaster at the Woodstock Country School once accused Edmundson of being a "hustling intellectual." Maybe that was it. I was being "hustled." The truth is though, I didn't mind. I enjoyed Edmundson's story too damn much to feel insulted - or hustled. As a wholly unique and entertaining record of finding one's place in the lost decade that was the seventies, this book succeeds admirably. ( )