Sorta Like a Rock Star/Matthew Quick: Reflections

On page 328 of Sorta Like a Rock Star, Matthew Quick's joyful-noise-making novel, Joan of Old, a woman just then dying, quotes some Nietzsche to our heroine, Amber Appleton.  It goes like this:

We should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once. And we should call every truth false which was not accompanied by at least one laugh.

Damn, I thought, when I got to that page.  I just knew Matthew Quick had dancing in him.  For Quick's Amber Appleton might, when we meet her, be residing in Hello Yellow (code name for the school bus that Amber's down-on-her-luck mother drives) but Amber's determined not to let her domicile get her down.  She's got too much spunking hope in all things living, for starters, and she's got too much faith in her own rocking self.  That is true, at least, until the worst possible thing actually happens, and Amber has to find her way back to believing in goodness, and in getting good things done.

Fast paced and light on its feet, SLARS (as Quick and his fans refer to the book) introduces readers to a town in which nobody and nothing is perfect, except for the quality of caring.  He jazzes the page with quick strokes and bright humor, slipstreaming haikus, a cast of quirks, and a well-spring of only temporarily daunted heart.  No wonder Quick and his wife, writer Alicia Bessette, are on a quest for kindness.  Because, judging from the powerful Sorta Like a Rock Star, kindness fuels Quick's world.