All Tomorrow's Parties: A Memoir
Apr 2016 · Open Road + Grove/Atlantic
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400
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About this ebook
"In this carefully wrought coming-of-age memoir, a young American writer searches for home in an unlikely place: East Berlin immediately after the fall of the wall." — Publishers Weekly, starred review
Rob Spillman—the award-winning, charismatic cofounding editor of the legendary Tin House magazine—has devoted his life to the rebellious pursuit of artistic authenticity. Born in Germany to two driven musicians, his childhood was spent among the West Berlin cognoscenti, in a city two hundred miles behind the Iron Curtain. There, the Berlin Wall stood as a stark reminder of the split between East and West, between suppressed dreams and freedom of expression.
After an unsettled youth moving between divorced parents in disparate cities, Spillman would eventually find his way into the literary world of New York City, only to abandon it to return to Berlin just months after the Wall came down. Twenty-five and newly married, Spillman and his wife, the writer Elissa Schappell, moved to the anarchic streets of East Berlin in search of the bohemian lifestyle of their idols. But Spillman soon discovered he was chasing the one thing that had always eluded him: a place, or person, to call home. In his intimate, entertaining, and heartfelt memoir, Spillman narrates a colorful, music-filled coming-of-age portrait of an artist's life that is also a cultural exploration of a shifting Berlin.
"With wry humor and wonder, Spillman beautifully captures the deadpan hedonism of the East Berliners and the city's sense of infinite possibility." — The New York Times Book Review
"A thrilling portrait of the artist as intrepid young adventure seeker." — Vanity Fair
"Convivial, page-turning . . . Spillman's life is a good one to read." — The Washington Post
Rob Spillman—the award-winning, charismatic cofounding editor of the legendary Tin House magazine—has devoted his life to the rebellious pursuit of artistic authenticity. Born in Germany to two driven musicians, his childhood was spent among the West Berlin cognoscenti, in a city two hundred miles behind the Iron Curtain. There, the Berlin Wall stood as a stark reminder of the split between East and West, between suppressed dreams and freedom of expression.
After an unsettled youth moving between divorced parents in disparate cities, Spillman would eventually find his way into the literary world of New York City, only to abandon it to return to Berlin just months after the Wall came down. Twenty-five and newly married, Spillman and his wife, the writer Elissa Schappell, moved to the anarchic streets of East Berlin in search of the bohemian lifestyle of their idols. But Spillman soon discovered he was chasing the one thing that had always eluded him: a place, or person, to call home. In his intimate, entertaining, and heartfelt memoir, Spillman narrates a colorful, music-filled coming-of-age portrait of an artist's life that is also a cultural exploration of a shifting Berlin.
"With wry humor and wonder, Spillman beautifully captures the deadpan hedonism of the East Berliners and the city's sense of infinite possibility." — The New York Times Book Review
"A thrilling portrait of the artist as intrepid young adventure seeker." — Vanity Fair
"Convivial, page-turning . . . Spillman's life is a good one to read." — The Washington Post
"In this carefully wrought coming-of-age memoir, a young American writer searches for home in an unlikely place: East Berlin immediately after the fall of the wall." — Publishers Weekly, starred review
Rob Spillman—the award-winning, charismatic cofounding editor of the legendary Tin House maga...
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Praise for All Tomorrow's Parties"With wry humor and wonder, Spillman beautifully captures the deadpan hedonism of the East Berliners and the city's sense of infinite possibility, which, to his frustration, never quite imbues him with his own artistic compulsion. (One is reminded as much of Cyril Connolly's anti-bildingsroman 'Enemies of Promise' as Nick Hornby's culture besotted 'High Fidelity.')" —New York Times Book Review"A thrilling portrait of the artist as intrepid young adventure seeker." —Vanity Fair"Convivial, page-turning . . . Spillman's life is a good one to read." —Washington Post"Truly exceptional memoirs have to do something more than recount a good origin story: they have to test the author's youthful understanding of the world, and break down that world, even as it's being built upon the page. All Tomorrow's Parties is such a memoir. Not only is it a super-fun, shatter-the-mirror joyride through Spillman's eccentric upbringing, but it's also replete with insightful double visions . . . [Spillman] manages to invoke both the dreamy, mythic version of life amid art and interesting scenery, and all the chaos and cracks and potential car crashes that threaten it . . . A thrill to read." —Interview Magazine"Compelling . . . [with] captivating journeys of self-discovery . . . [this] memoir says exactly the right things in the most engaging way." —Minneapolis Star Tribune"[A] meditation on place and placelessness, and the thrilling, dangerous, necessary place that both art and the artist occupy in the world." —NPR.org"An artful and irreverent memoir . . . Spillman shares an unusual immigrant story—of a white boy born to American parents; an unusual German story—not of the Holocaust, but of the Cold War; and an unusual love story that takes driving (and running) across a continent to find its way back home. These pages are proof that Spillman has filled his father's footsteps to live for art." —Brooklyn Rail"Spillman is happiest when he is betwixt and between—on the road, crossing borders, running long distances. This is a realm he knows intimately and documents beautifully in All Tomorrow's Parties, a yearning, restless memoir about a lost boy looking for home." —Los Angeles Review of Books"A culturally saturated, Technicolor account of the author's unusual upbringing and the intentional adventures of his young adulthood . . . It is a shrine filled with relics for the people and the art he loves. It quivers with the type of honesty it takes to admit your deepest, most damning secrets. But Spillman isn't angling for sympathy. Instead he is bold and almost defiant. All Tomorrow's Parties is a major achievement and a reflection of the epigraph for chapter 59, which is a Denis Johnson quote: 'Write naked. Write from exile. Write in blood.'" —The Rumpus"Wondrous . . . every page [is] an ecstatic celebration of this thing called life in all of its weird and short glory." —Vol. 1 Brooklyn"Engrossing. . . . provides a fine and stark description of lives lived in the shadows of Glasnost, perestroika and the disintegration of the Soviet Union." —Winnipeg Free Press"Revealing and energetic . . . a captivating story of both personal awakening and cultural upheaval." —Bookreporter"A captivating coming-of-age story and snapshot of a city in flux." —Toronto Star METRO"In this carefully wrought coming-of-age memoir, a young American writer searches for home in an unlikely place: Eaast Berlin immediately after the fall of the wall. . . . His is a quest of roots and writerly authenticity—and his evocation of East Berlin's days is exquisite and revealing." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)"Lifelong exposure to passionate artists may have fueled [Spillman's] creativity, but an existential dread that he won't find passion in his own life gnaws at him. . . .
Praise for All Tomorrow's Parties"With wry humor and wonder, Spillman beautifully captures the deadpan hedonism of the East Berliners and the city's sense of infinite possibility, which, to his frustration, never quite imbues him with his own artistic compulsion. (One is reminded as much of Cyril...
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