Looking To Get Lost: Adventures in Music and Writing

Peter Guralnick

Hardcover | 16.51 x 4.13 x 24.13 cm | 576 pp

Little, Brown | 2020 | 9780316412629

In his first collection of essays, Peter Guralnick dives deep into question at the heart of his body of work: What is the source of creativity? Spanning his decades-long career as America's foremost music scholar, this book brings us into the minds of the artists who inspire him.

This is a book about the whirlwind of creativity, the passionate drive to make art born of individuated experience that is both unique and unduplicatable. Looking to Get Lost offers deeply felt, masterful portraits of artists like Ray Charles, Howlin' Wolf, Tammy Wynette, Allen Toussaint, Merle Haggard, and Eric Clapton, operating at the height of their creative powers. It reflects the passion that Guralnick himself has brought to all his work, with a personal thread of self-discovery-whether he is telling the story of Chuck Berry, Doc Pomus, Solomon Burke, novelists Lee Smith and Henry Green, or Jerry Lee Lewis consistently running through it.

This singular book of profiles represents not so much a summation as a culmination of Peter Guralnick's groundbreaking work over the years, covering not only the vast  sweep of the American musical landscape but its profound personal impact on the author as well. It brings the reader into Guralnick's one-of-a-kind relationships with his subjects, and we peek into how he was able to engage with musicians, writers, and creators as only he can: as a fan, a student, a peer, and in many cases as a friend.