KILL YOUR FRIENDS

While the title is not quite meant to be taken literally, it does express the cynicism at the core of this novel by Niven (Music from Big Pink, 2005) about the contemporary music industry.

At the maelstrom’s center is London A&R man Steven Stelfox, who desperately desires to cease being an occasionally successful minion and be made head of his recording company’s Artist and Repertoire division. Stelfox is one of the most narcissistic and hateful characters in recent memory: Lying is natural to him, and his overdeveloped sense of competition makes screwing friends and colleagues as easy as breathing—or perhaps a more apt simile would be as easy as snorting lines of coke, a habit he liberally indulges. Stelfox inhabits a subculture pervaded by drugs, sex (kinky and otherwise), inauthenticity and materialism. He not only revels in this world, he wants to come out on top. The obstacles to his goal are formidable. Chief among them are airily arrogant artists like Rage, who’s received a formidable advance from the studio to produce an album freakishly incapable of attaining commercial success. (Rage wants to release an hour-long cut as a single and refuses to allow the company any edits.) Stelfox finds himself reluctantly promoting a new girl band called Songbirds. His first impression? “Imagine you’d got four fishwives together, filled them full of Special Brew, and told them to scream random, primal abuse at each other.” (Eventually they transform from semi-literate East Enders to catty artistes.) Other roadblocks standing between Stelfox and his dreams are a stable of vicious studio executives prone to goofing off and goofing up. When one of his greatest professional rivals is imported as the new director of A&R, Stelfox has to become, if possible, even more loathsome, devious and deadly.

The protagonist’s venomous rants have the power to amuse, but ultimately they become infantile and tedious.