Tiger in a Trance: A Novel by Max
Ludington
Good, But Left Me Wanting More
In the tradition of Robert Stone and Denis Johnson, a darkly authentic road
novel set in the nomadic world of the Deadheads.
It is 1985, and eighteen-year-old Jason Burke is a full-time Deadhead,
following the Grateful Dead around the country and surviving by selling T-
shirts. But Jason is about to discover the lucrative ease of selling drugs.
He’ll also meet the women who will play key romantic roles in his life: Jane,
the tall, green-eyed girlfriend of a drug dealer; and Melanie, a rebellious
high school girl, one-armed as the result of a car accident. Jason’s one-
night tryst with Melanie sets the stage for their future before Jason takes
off for California with the tour.
Jason has a past of his own. He grew up overseas, the son of a journalist,
and when he was eleven his father was killed in a Syrian prison, accused

of spying. Jason has never dealt directly with his father’s death, and his
detachment has estranged him from his mother and his older brother.
In Carmel, Jason stops for the night to see Harry, an old friend of his
father. He learns that Harry, a rock-and-roll-loving alcoholic, is dying of
emphysema. Eventually, Jason falls into drug dealing in earnest; hits the
road with Melanie; is pursued by private detectives; and returns to nurse
Harry through his final illness, all the while battling his own increasingly
serious heroin addiction. The end of the road is near.
Combining the high spirits of youth with the sometimes jaded wisdom of
the counterculture, Tiger in a Trance is a startlingly sure-handed and
accomplished debut novel that recalls such generational classics as Less
Than Zero and The Beach. It shows how music, drugs, and especially love
can be enchanting, and how the most bewitching things can also be the
most bedeviling.
Personal Review: Tiger in a Trance: A Novel by Max Ludington
Max Ludington has written a remarkable book in "Tiger in a Trance," his
insiders look into the cult of the Grateful Dead.
There are lines that stopped me cold in this book, such as in the scene
where the protagonist, Jason, has just administered a hit of killer dope and
immediately makes for the toilet. "I read the legend inscribed at the top of
the porcelain bowl: American Standard. I nodded my head, feeling, as
LSD had taught me sometimes to feel, that wisdom was being imparted to
me in ways I was only occasionally aware of."
One gets the feeling of what it was to be "on tour" during the mid `80s with
the Dead. The drab sameness of American cities, the phenomena of a
Hartford or a Worcester being transformed into a special place for the two
days the Dead were in town, then returning to its mundane 9 to 5
existence. Ludington successfully renders the time and place perfectly in
this book as he, quite believably, traces Jason's descent from rather
privileged Deadhead lifestyle into serious drug use and the dangers that
lifestyle entails. When Jason loses his pal Randy (who made their way
through the tours selling t-shirts), he loses his moral compass - a point that
is made clear late in the book when Jason remembers driving with Randy
years before, heading to another Dead show at Alpine Valley, when a
perfectly rendered bluegrass gospel song comes on the radio: "We
listened not looking at each other, trying to contain the charge arcing
between the music and the green triumph of the Iowa summer. We didn't
talk about it afterward. The song ended and Randy shut off the radio, and
we let it dissipate for a few miles."
I saw the Dead a number of times during the years Ludington describes
and I can readily attest to the changes in the scene as the years went by,

such as when "Touch of Grey" became so big and brought with it a lot of
newcomers - I experienced this up in Maine at the Oxford Speedway
shows - and the disappointing (to Deadheads, anyway) Dylan/Dead series
of concerts. I never went `on tour' and only saw the Dead when they came
my way (and never after Brent died) - so "Tiger in a Trance" gave me a
good idea as to what was going on in the lives of all these people that I
would see, that seemed to have found something in life worth getting
excited about - no small feat in the America of the `80s.
What I was hoping for in this book, and did not quite get, was some
examination of why the music of the Grateful Dead was able to take over
the lives of so many people - why no other band had ever inspired people
to changes their lives. I think I found the answer in a book on an entirely
different topic when I read the following passage and the Deadheads I
mixed with immediately came to mind: "Attended by a motley crew of men
and women who were shockingly ordinary, unremarkable for intellectual
acumen, social grace, wit or quickness..."
This description of first followers of Jesus, written by Donald Spoto in his
book "The Hidden Life of Jesus," to me perfectly describes the fans of the
Grateful Dead. When I ran into this passage in Spoto's book, it brought to
mind a nascent thought that was beginning to gather steam - that Jerry
Garcia was, in many ways, an American Jesus. Just as Christ's followers
followed him from place to place to hear him preach, so did the Deadheads
follow the Grateful Dead (mostly for Jerry) from place to place, hoping for
the band's alchemy to spark and provide that window from which they
would achieve a moment of grace, an awakening of the spirit within them,
as a group, however fleeting it may have been (or fueled by the intake of
narcotics).
America changed significantly when Jerry died. Something vital in its spirit
was cauterized, and we will not likely see its like again in our lifetime. The
magic of the Dead was the magic that is found in rare moments - when
things suddenly come together and life makes sense, and the good Dead
moments provided this magic in a way that is completely ineffable. The
Grateful Dead played primarily to an audience that was, for the most part,
incapable of examining closely what is was they were experiencing. They
just knew when it was there and when it was not, and were very grateful
for those moments when it was there.
Music alone provides the means be which we may get a glimpse of the
spiritual nature that we know is inside of us (and which is buried entirely by
the impedimenta of our day-to-day lives) and the Dead, despite their
lapses and faults, were the only vehicle providing this window of
opportunity for the masses. Bless the Deadheads, for they were the true
seekers of our times, and Ludington's book gets close to nailing what is
was like inside this peculiarly American quest for enlightenment.

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