Horror Hospital Unplugged

Dennis Cooper and Keith Mayerson's groundbreaking black comedy follows the misadventures of Trevor Machine - the twenty-something, sexually confused lead singer for L.A.'s Horror Hospital, an indie rock band on its way to fame and fortune - as he struggles with love, lust, drugs, fame, and carnally charged visits from the ghost of River Phoenix. A coming-out tale as well as a coming-of-age story, Horror Hospital Unplugged is a heady distillation of Generation X's most piercing insights into creativity, sexuality, and stardom. It's perfect for readers who walked a similar road to Trevor's in the mid-1990s as part of the West Coats' burgeoning indie rock scene, and ideal for younger readers who identify with modern America's strongly resurgent punk subculture. Building upon a rich visual and textual foundation of cultural, artistic, and literary allusions, Horror Hospital Unplugged erects a towering commentary on the ineffectual detachment of the art world, the stagnancy of Hollywood, and - most centrally - the stifling superficiality of the music industry. Keith Mayerson's eye-popping artwork, which The Los Angeles Times praised as post-slacker surrealism, is the perfect partner to Dennis Cooper's cerebral plotting and deeply nuanced characters. Horror Hospital Unplugged's first printing earned a listing in Publishers Weekly's Best Books of 1996, and this gorgeously packed reissue is sure to appeal to the multitude of graphic novel fans that have entered the market in the last fifteen years.