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Camden Joy’s hero can’t wrap up the quickie biography of rock star Liz Phair he’s been commissioned to write. Instead, the shaky ­author finds himself recounting the troubled events of his own life. His ex-girlfriend (who just might be the illegitimate daughter of dead Rolling Stone Brian Jones), Liz Phair (whom he’s never met), and a mystery girl seen looting a shop in an old photo all start to blur together in his mind. If only he could get closer to his subject before the assignment spins out of control, maybe he’d have a shot at the distinction he feels he deserves . . . Hilarious and compelling, The Last Rock Star Book is both an ­engrossing read and a powerful meditation on celebrity and obsession.

“This is a book you’ll read in one sitting and go back to, rereading favorite passages like you’d replay favorite songs.”—Ana Marie Cox, Mother Jones

“Camden Joy . . . sets music to narrative with a knowingness and grace that elucidates what it means to be a rock star and/or fan more persuasively­ than any other contemporary novelist.”—Dennis Cooper

“Guerrilla writer Camden Joy is a unique voice—a weird amalgamation of social critics like Lester Bangs and Greil Marcus who have used rock and roll as their lens, and writers like Geoff Dyer, Nicholson Baker, and Frank O’Hara . . . His moral seriousness—which rarely deflects his sense of humor—ignites his lyric imagery—and linguistic virtuosity. Hero worship, celebrity, the dialectic between art and commerce all inform his work.”—Jon Garelick, Boston Phoenix