User:Glavinorama

Kevin Glavin is an author living in Southern California.

Rock Star's Rainbow is Kevin Glavin's first novel, published in 2009.

In it, Glavin assumes the archaic guise of editor, claiming to have found the manuscript on a plane. As editor, he pieces together the narrative, "connecting the dots" of a somewhat bizarre, reverse Bildungsroman.

PLOT
In August 2009, a renowned entertainment reporter was thrown out of a plane over Los Angeles. At the time of his unfortunate death, he was completing a manuscript detailing the strange personal life of a most secretive celebrity--Rook. Luckily, the work in progress was rescued, although the details remain obscure. The story takes the form of an exposé of the infamous rock star, searching for his lost innocence. The quixotic adventure journeys from LA, to Amsterdam, to India, and back. Along the way, Rook struggles with artistic melancholy, reunites with his old girlfriend, gets mixed up with the mafia, and must rescue the daughter he never knew he had.

CULTURAL AND LITERARY REFERENCES
The book begins with a sold-out concert at the Hollywood Bowl.

The main character, Rook Heisenberg (no relation to the famous physicist), celebrates his 33rd birthday on June 16, 2009 (also the date of Leopold Bloom's odyssey in James Joyce's  Ulysses).

Rook frequents the Rainbow Bar and Grill in West Hollywood, California.

There are allusions throughout the work to Rainbows in mythology and in literature.

The epigraph quotes from Don Quixote.

There are references to Søren Kierkegaard's Either/Or.

In Rock Star's Rainbow, a print of Dürer's Melencolia I is used as a bookmark by the anonymous author, charting his progress while working on the scandalous exposé.

In addition, a triangular paper football containing Dürer's magic square is innocently placed in a pendant around the rock legend's neck (unbeknownst to him) to serve as a talisman, protecting him from melancholy.

As the novel nears its conclusion, the sum of all the numbers in the square (136) is linked to the fine-structure constant (137) in theoretical physics.