Shelter

A novel from pop culture - at first I dismissed it as style-over-substance kitsh. My mood prompted me to pick it up and I found that I had underestimated it. Billy has decided, after the 60s, that the world is going to end if no-one does anything soon. As a professional bumper sticker writer, he tries to reach people and even goes so far as to write doomsday messages on the menus of his wife's vegetarian restaurant. After she leaves him, he is visited by an apparition of John Lennon who tells him the answer is in the music. Billy flies to San Fransisco, to his old stoner friend, to decode Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and save the world. "Shelter" deals with the obsession of a man with the failure of the world around him to see his truth. It's not a heavy book - it's a sketch, a satire, and utterly hilarious. Still, there's enough thought behind the character to add depth. The style - a single short scene on each page, cut with letters to his wife and kids and flasback descriptions of his past druggie life, lends itself very well.

sometimes u know something is brilliant even if u don't quite understand it. that's the case here. waiting for someone to explain it to me.