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When someone asks me what Moody Food is about, I usually say it is 'a kind of Great Gatsby of the 60s, with lots of sex, drugs, and rock and roll.'" - Ray Robertson
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The Santa Fe Writers Project is proud to take you on a rock and roll tour of the ages - a classic journey through the music, the mystery, and the love that flowered out of the 60s. Crossing over from his homeland of Canada, Ray Robertson gives American readers a taste of what our neighbors to the north have enjoyed for years – the inimitable voice of one of their most ambitious novelists. In Moody Food, he introduces us to "The Duckhead Secret Society" in their search for truth, justice, and the Musical Way.
Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings and Gram Parsons searched for the fusion of rock and country, fighting the giants of Nashville along the way. Johnny, Willie and Waylon made it, while Gram’s life was cut short in a whirlwind of drugs and booze. Inspired by Gram’s revolutionary vision and music, Ray Robertson’s Moody Food captures the rise and fall of an entire generation’s tragic idealism.
It is also a stylized snapshot of Toronto's infamous Yorkville district in the 60s - the "Haight-Ashbury" of the North - a place once overrun with artists, intellectuals, hippies, and Americans running from the Vietnam War.
"I believe that no matter what artistic pursuits you have, you want to be regarded like a rock star," Robertson says. "Especially novelists and poets. I remember reading an old interview with Leonard Cohen where he said that the days of poets standing on windswept cliffs wearing capes are over. Nowadays they play guitars. I agree with that to a certain degree, mainly because of the energy and vitality that it brought to writing in general. Writers have to accept the fact that we're in an age when writers don't matter anymore. I look at the positive side, which is you can do whatever you want to do."
Review Quotes
“Young Canadian novelist Robertson re-creates the funky atmosphere of 1960s Toronto in this homage to the short, drug-fueled life of musician Gram Parsons (here fictionalized as American southerner Thomas Graham). Yorkville bookstore employee Bill Hanson is instantly mesmerized by his first sighting of Graham, who is decked out in his customary flamboyant attire--"white cowboy boots and a red silk shirt, all topped off with a white jacket covered with a green sequined pot plant, a couple of sparkling acid cubes, and a pair of woman's breasts." Once Graham lays out his vision for melding country and rock, what he calls Interstellar North American Music, the ragtag band is born, with Bill's bald, vegan girlfriend on bass and an alcoholic old-timer on a weeping pedal steel guitar. As they embark on a tour that takes them from dives to the legendary Whisky Club in L.A., Thomas and Bill become increasingly obsessed with their music and with hard drugs. Robertson builds in a sense of foreboding even as he offers a frequently hilarious take on a troubled musical visionary.” - Joanne Wilkinson, Booklist
“From the land of back bacon and Labatt comes Ray Robertson's Moody Food, a book about musician Thomas Graham taking college dropout Bill Hansen on a trip down the sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll highway on a quest to make "Interstellar North American Music". Graham is based on country-rock musician Gram Parsons, and the novel somewhat follows the arc of Parsons' story, but I think the real star of the book is the writing, with its displays of sharp humor and deep love of music.” - Jamelah Earle, Litkicks.com
“Robertson’s skill in writing about music earns this book its place on this list. He doesn’t merely describe a song from the outside; he enters fully into the flow, recreating the experience for the reader with an often heart-breaking clarity. There are musical moments in Moody Food that are, quite literally, breathtaking.” - The Vancouver Sun, Best Books
“…Moody Food can be read as a great twisting of the tale of Gatsby, with amphetamines and cocaine as the tonics of choice…Robertson is a moral writer and a bitingly intelligent one, a man who writes with penetrating insight about what needs to be written about: beauty, truth and goodness in people living at a time when there is no agreement about these or any values…” - The Globe and Mail
“Moody Food has the vibrancy of The Sun Also Rises…Robertson’s ability to catch the mood of the times is uncanny. The book is a rollicking good read.” - The London Free Press
“One of the major pleasures of the book – one among many – is its language…every voice and description in the book rings with authenticity.” - The National Post
“…his characters are as engaging as they are vivid. The spell of his barroom yarn never lets up…Burning question: Will Ray Robertson and his book make the cover of Rolling Stone?” - The Montreal Gazette
About the Author
Ray Robertson is a novelist living in Toronto. His first novel, Home Movies, won the Alta Lynd Cooke prize and his second, Heroes, received considerable praise. Moody Food was selected as one of The Globe & Mail’s Top 100 Books of the Year, and was selected as a Book of the Year by The Vancouver Sun. His most recent novel, Gently Down the Stream was published in the spring to wide acclaim. His book reviews frequently appear in the Toronto Star and The Globe and Mail.