Looking to Get Lost

the long version

"Peter Guralnick's remarkable work... covers old ground from new perspectives, offering deeply felt, masterful, and strikingly personal portraits of creative artists, both musicians and writers, at the height of their powers. "You put the book down feeling that its sweep is vast, that you have read of giants who walked among us," rock critic Lester Bangs wrote of Guralnick's earlier work in words that could just as easily be applied to this new one. And yet, for all of the encomiums that Guralnick's books have earned for their remarkable insights and depth of feeling, Looking to Get Lost is his most personal book yet. For readers who have grown up on Guralnick's unique vision of the vast sweep of the American musical landscape, who have imbibed his loving and lively portraits and biographies of such titanic figures as Elvis Presley, Sam Cooke, and Sam Phillips, there are multiple surprises and delights here, carrying on and extending all the themes, fascinations, and passions of his groundbreaking earlier work."--From publisher's description. "This is a book about the whirlwind of creativity, the passionate drive to make art born of individuated experience that is both unique and unduplicatable... This singular new book of profiles represents not so much a summation as a culmination of Peter Guralnick's groundbreaking work over the years, covering not only the vast sweep of the American musical landscape but its profound personal impact on the author as well"--Adapted from jacket flap.