Suppose Elvis Presley died in 1959 instead of 1973? Would anyone in 2025 remember or care about his return from the Army, his stints in Las Vegas, the tours of Graceland? Castro would still have come to power in Cuba. Luna 3 would circle the Earth and U.S. soldiers would have landed in Vietnam.
Yet for the three young men in Tim Kirk’s ALL HIS DAMNED MOTHER’S SONS (Pelekinesis), Elvis’ death in 1959 becomes a defining event. In this alternative future, the death of the King of Rock and Roll unmoors a generation. Their idol embodied fantasies of a life lived huge, suddenly vanished. His early demise unleashes a high-speed marathon chase for life–from 1959 to 1973.
The King’s demise also created a hole in the music business’ lucrative model. A&R men want a replacement and Billy Clover’s agent decides he has a shot to become the next King of Rock ‘n Roll. Clover’s a redhead, but he’s got moves, a voice, sex appeal. Billy also can play and, if so inspired, write his own songs. His agent’s hungry, but Billy’s charisma is like a mirage in the desert. He can’t be ELVIS but who is that person in the mirror, he doesn’t quite recognize? Billy has to figure it out. He won’t get another chance.
High school boys also mourn Elvis. He wanted money and women and went out and got it! They aren’t afraid of doing the same. What matters is they are alive! Time is on their side, as they speed though the night. Yet there’s tolls on that “whatever” road and soon it’s 1973. They aren’t boys, as destiny crashes half-baked dreams. Who walks away?
Not the hell-raisers bound for Vegas, crime, women and money! Not the guy who ends in the jungles of Vietnam. For a long moment they are young men who “get the score,” before their world slows-down. Past and present collide on ALL HIS DAMNED MOTHER’S SONS. The novel’s a kind of ballad of lost youth, who loved and lived through Elvis’ “bad boy.” Entertainer, lover-girl magnet are part of this lost persona. Unexpected shock happens, as they live their smaller lives without him.
Tim Kirk’s heart is true to the spirit of young male mayhem and he feels the dire costs to his characters of losing themselves in the unbridelled fantasy Elvis. Kirk’s also the author of the short stories The Feral Boy Who Lives in Griffith. As a writer-director, among his films are Sex Madness Revealed and the award-winning The Mystery of Durango.
Confession, in my high school late 1960s, where young men were earmarked by Army recruiters for Nam, the big deal was drag racing on illicit strips. (Cars sometimes turned over and drivers didn’t always walk out.) These guys never heard of James Dean. This was a “cool” past-time, featuring chases by cops. They also didn’t know Jack Kerouac, but their fantasies of cross-country trips to see “America” were huge. Later this movement, fuelled by young men and NAM, was mythologized in the 1969 movie, “Easy Rider.” (I am unsure there’s an equivalent movement off-line these days for exploration and adventure.)
Satoshi Yagisawa’s DAYS AT THE TORUNKA CAFE (November 2025 Harper Perennial) also looks at a cultural artifact that is out-of-time, in this case, not a person, but a place in modern Tokyo, Japan. Like his previous book, Days at the Morisaku Bookshop, the Cafe, on a narrow side street, is an unexpected place, known to locals and the “initiated.” It is a place “where the passersby are more likely to be local cats than tourists.”
Who goes there and why? There’s no profit motive in the location, no advertising, what’s the attraction? Fabulous perfect coffee, each cup individually milled, after customer selection, for a customer’s taste. Aromas are mesmerizing, the cafe owner’s satisfaction a visible smile. Oddly, the cafe owner’s teenage daughter, Shizuku Tachibaba, hates coffee and never drinks it. A hidden mystery of the Cafe. The owner himself, seems too relaxed, elegant, learned; not the kind of man to run an “off the beaten path” kind of place? (The observation of a new customer.)
The novel relates the extraordinary stories of regulars, which often are connected in unexpected ways. Chinatsu Yukimura, a strange and beautiful young woman, strangely claimed to know the waiter in a previous life. Hiroyuka Numata, a middle-aged man, returned to the neighborhood talks vaguely about love lost and a previous life in the area. Yet his present is a unanswered question. The mysteries of how they found the cafe and themselves–are about the fluidity of time, memory, and it’s presence in our lives.
In this lovely novel, birth, death, love are not random but somehow choreographed by the ineffable wisdom of the human soul. THE TORUNKA CAFE, a low-key place focussed on customer pleasures, is less about coffee than company. The place itself is a medium for nourishment of the human spirit. Resolution is less about happenstance, than the timing of evolved inner knowledge.
S.W.
Source:
https://notanotherbookreview.blogspot.com/2025/10/all-his-damned-mothers-sons-by-tim-kirk.html
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