Product Description

Floorboard George Gastin is part of an insurance scam to wreck a pure white, mint condition '59 Cadillac originally intended for The Big Bopper as a token of an admirer's love. But Floorboard George has other ideas and when he disappears with the car, gangsters and cops are soon in hot pursuit. On the road, the crazy characters, hitch-hikers and demented preachers he meets provide the high-octane entertainment as George covers many miles -- and states of mind -- in his quest to find the true spirit of rock 'n' roll.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #265742 in Books
• Published on: 2004-04-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 325 pages

About the Author
JIM DODGE is a poet and novelist. He lives on an isolated ranch in western Sonoma County and has been by turns an apple picker, a carpet layer, a teacher, a professional gambler, a shepherd for five years and a woodcutter. He is working on a new novel.

Customer Reviews

A road-trip of mind-bending quality
This is the story of Floorboard George, a roaming pick-up driver with a story to tell.

Written in a fantastically readable style, Dodge certainly knows how to grab the reader's attention and hold on for dear life. Every nuance of George's colourful life is covered in a first person narrative where you can almost BE George - embracing rock 'n' roll and its trappings to help explain just why a dodgy insurance scam metamorphosises into a beautiful road trip.

Meeting some fascinating characters along the way,such as the eccentric inventor, Joshua, and the to-hell-and-back preacherman Double-Gone Johnson (if this book ever hit the big screen, a role more than suited to Samuel L Jackson) George tells of his burning desire to take a pristine '59 Cadillac to the grave of the Big Bopper, as per the dying wish of an obsessed fan.

Guzzling tinnies and bennies along the way, the frazzled mind of George plays ludicrous tricks on him (check out the story of the little orange man and his big jigsaw puzzle piece, and of jiving cacti for starters !) and leaves him in a bigger hole as the frenzied Scumball's mad mob charge after him to catch him with his prize haul.

Whilst not as wired as Hunter S Thompson's road trip to Hell, 'Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas', this foot-to-the-metal, rollercoaster of a ride is instantly likeable and fantastic entertainment. Has anyone got a raft of money they could lend me so I can make the film please ? De Niro as George, definitely !!!

One to pass on to all your friends
I have now lost count of the number of copies of this I have given to other people. It is one of the most delightful things I have read in the last ten years. The characters leap off the page and blow raspberries on your belly.

Think Steinbeck's Cannery Row with a dose of rock and roll.

If you thought Kerouak's books never quite lived up to all the fuss - this is the book for you.

Deeply cool, deeply touching, wryly humourous and there is a character called Double-Gone Johnson.

What more could you want.

A road movie in a book
This is just like reading a road movie. The plot described in the synopsis, while accurate, does not do justice to this novel. Read if for the style, the humour, and the lifestyle. The author's voice is incredible: you can just hear it - and the appropriate accent - in your head. At the end I was left thinking "so what?" but this is a minor quibble.

"He dances to his own music."