When ‘Eternal Fire’ was first published in 1982, Nick Tosches On the rocker Jerry Lee Lewis, it was considered “the best rock and roll biography ever written” by ‘Rolling Stone’. There was a reason for this: Far from the typical biography and mere data string from the Contra publishing house, ‘Eternal Fire’ was a pretty (short) big novel. Tosches approached Lewis with a dark and visceral literature filled with biblical references, without neglecting the contrasting research.
There is not much difference between fiction and non-fiction for the writer who oscillates between journalism, biography, novel and poetry. He explains to this appendix: “In a work of nonfiction, an author is tied to fact. In a novel, an author is free from all restrictions. But writing fact and writing fiction can be equally different experiences.” liberating”.
Tosches writes ‘Eternal Fire’ so intensely that at times it can be said that he identifies with this musician, caught between reverence for God and the lure of the dark side of life. He writes about someone else as if it were his own life.
His references of the biographical genre are not so much authors as certain works: “The explorer’s life Richard Burton with light brown brodie. between Henry James with leon edel. between Ezra pound with Humphrey the carpenter. Just now, ‘British Opium Eater’, a life Thomas DeQuincey with Robert Morrison. If you feel like you have a hard life, read it.”
passion for life
His third marriage—to his 13-year-old cousin, Myra Gale Brown—destroyed his career, which wasn’t revived until the late 1960s, transforming Lewis from rock and roll to country music.
If he chose Jerry Lee Lewis for his first biography – others followed, Dean Martin or a boxer sonny liston“It was because of the greatness of that character and that life. It was beyond Faulkner, beyond the Old Testament. He was not only a great character, but a unique and fascinating character,” he explains.
Although Tosches doesn’t explain exactly what his first contact with the musician was, he gives us a response filled with poetic brilliance: “I was a child maybe six or seven years old when I first saw him. Many years later, after writing in this book, he left the island of Marettimo in western Sicily. “I was staring at it and saw a strange, gloomy, violent glow in the dark night sky. That was my first memory of Jerry Lee Lewis: a mysterious, fiery prophecy looming on the horizon, a premonition of the coming storm.”
Deep Roots
The book opens with a description of the night Jerry Lee Lewis, also known as ‘The Killer’, approached Elvis’ mansion maliciously (and with a pocket pistol). He was arrested before the attack escalated.
It’s not a ‘flipback’ to the musician’s childhood, but an exploration of Lewis’ ancestors and his life on Snake Ridge, an old settlement of poor farmers (so old and insignificant that it’s not even on maps). From there his family moved to Ferriday because a wealthy relative lived there. Lee Calhoun (Lewis owes his middle name to Uncle Lee.)
Jerry began singing in a church of the Assembly of God of the Pentecostal movement in that town in the Deep South.
scandal after scandal
Our anti-hero learned to fear God, but he fell into scandal after scandal. Hit her bassist, married her 13-year-old second cousin, myra (She was 22) hospitalized for amphetamine abuse… The pharmacist she shared with Elvis once claimed that Lewis could drink eight to ten amphetamine capsules before each performance. “He was a man who would have created hell for himself if he didn’t have hell,” says Tosches.
Years ago, Lewis spoke about the author in these terms in an interview. GQ: “Oh, Tosches is as shitty as a Christmas turkey. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about… I’m going to blow his head off.” So is Jerry Lee.
It remains only to live
Jerry Lee Lewis always for movie buffs Dennis QuaidHe embodied it in his 1989 biography, ‘The Great Ball of Fire’, whose light tone hardly matches the darkness of the skin signed by Tosches. What does the author think about this movie? “Not really,” he says without further ado.
The film is based on a book written by Myra, his second cousin’s wife, and tells a story in the key to a romantic comedy that is not at all funny to others: was she a manipulator and she was a cheated girl. ? The movie hints at this, but the fun wins.
It is possible to imagine what it could do, say, Scorsese With a book like ‘Eternal Fire’. But it wasn’t Tosches’ biography that concerned the director of “One of Us”, it was Tosches’s biography. Dean Martin. There has been talk of an adaptation for a long time. Is it still working? “No, they don’t tell me anything,” says the author. “The only movie that interests me, that I have something to see, is the one Johnny Depp wanted to make from the Dante Manuscript,” he admits.