Confessions of a Memory Eater by Pagan Kennedy--Reading and Signing--June 24, 4pm

What if you could return to the most delicious moments of your past and live inside them again with crystal clarity? What if you could decide to simply pop a pill and leave the difficulty of the present for a time of your choosing? The day you aced an impossible performance or heard the words “I love you” from someone you adore. What if you were diagnosed with a fatal disease? And what if there was a drug that enabled you, instead of spending your last days on earth surrounded by well-meaning relatives, to escape, to travel back to the time you were strongest in your life? Would you take the drug? What would you do to get it?

Win Duncan, the protagonist of Pagan Kennedy’s latest, Confessions of a Memory Eater, is at a cross roads in his career (and his marriage) when he is mysteriously summoned by Litminov, a wild but brilliant outlaw he knew in grad school at Columbia. Litminov has made millions since, and has bought a pharmaceutical company solely to develop Mem, an experimental drug that gives the user the ability to live inside one’s memories with crystal clarity. Duncan becomes a beta tester and loses himself to the most delicious moments of his past—until he finds that the present pales by comparison.

Pagan Kennedy is the author of seven previous books in a variety of genres, including novels and non-fiction narratives. Fascinated by pop culture and alternative lifestyles, she’s the highly acclaimed author of Platforms: A Microwaved Cultural Chronicle of the 1970s; Pagan Kennedy’s Living: A Handbook for Maturing Hippies; Black Livingstone: A True Tale of Adventure in the Nineteenth-Century Congo; and several novels; as well as the creator of the ’90s zine Pagan’s Head. A proven master of underground literature, beat fiction, and narrative nonfiction, in Confessions, Kennedy takes on America’s obsession with the idealized past with freshness, wit, and an uncanny ability to measure the pulse of postmodern culture.

Pagan Kennedy will be reading from Confessions of a Memory Eater on Saturday, June 24 at 4 pm at Feed Your Head Books, 272 Essex Street, Salem, MA (accessible by MBTA via the commuter rail to Salem). Admission is free. For more information, please contact randie@feedyourheadbooks.com or call 978-744-4009.

And enough of the PR stuff. Seriously, Pagan Kennedy is one of my all-time favorite authors, so come and check her out. It's not just hype!