Margins
Please Step Back book cover
Please Step Back
2009
First Published
3.31
Average Rating
320
Number of Pages

The rise and fall of a true American A rock star, inspired by genre-busting musicians of the sixties like Sly Stone, Curtis Mayfield, and Marvin Gaye. A swirling sixties saga of the rise and fall of a true American A rock star. But not just any rock Rock Foxx is an outrageous showman whose unprecedented mixed-race, mixed-gender band made a new kind of socially conscious music that was infectious and tribal and scaled the heights of sixties rock stardom, all the way to Woodstock and beyond. But Foxx seemed to disappear at the height of his fame, his contagious, upbeat music darkening, then ending ubruptly amidst rumors of drugs and violence, as the culture itself exploded into massive riots and assassinations. In the hands of New Yorker editor Ben Greenman, it's a story that is both highly literary and simply entertaining, a tale about rock and roll and about a complicated but key moment in our history. Exciting, funny, disturbing and uplifting, with some of the most deft and absorbing writing about music ever to appear in American fiction, this pseudo-bio of a fascinating character is an amazing creation in itself, and sure to be one of the most talked-about books of the year.

Avg Rating
3.31
Number of Ratings
64
5 STARS
14%
4 STARS
30%
3 STARS
36%
2 STARS
14%
1 STARS
6%
goodreads

Author

Ben Greenman
Ben Greenman
Author · 13 books
Ben Greenman is an editor at The New Yorker whose short fiction, journalism, and essays have appeared there, The New York Times, McSweeneys, The Paris Review, and Zoetrope: All Story. He is the author of several acclaimed books of fiction, including Superbad, Superworse, A Circle is a Balloon and Compass Both, Correspondences, and the novel Please Step Back. HIs new book of stories What He's Poised To Do: Stories was published in June of 2010.
548 Market St PMB 65688, San Francisco California 94104-5401 USA
© 2026 Paratext Inc. All rights reserved