Frank Portman

King Dork

Reading • Q&A • Signing

Frank Portman's first novel was written to accompany the soundtrack he had already written and recorded with his rock band The Mr. T Experience.

This novel is about Tom Henderson and his best friend Sam. It's about the rigors of the high school social scene. Ultimately it's about reading, rock 'n' roll, and maybe sex and drugs (if those aren't just on his mind).

Tom and Sam are outcasts among the social set, so they spend their time inventing the names of bands they would like to form and the albums they want to record. Tom manages to teach himself to play guitar and write songs that chronicle their dreams and angst.

Meanwhile Tom is trying to understand his dead father, a detective, who is still a mystery to him. A box of his father's books gives him some of the clues he needs and reading Catcher in the Rye introduces him to a Caulfieldian cynicism that opens his eyes to a whole new universe.

In the end Tom might have become a pretty good guitarist, learned a little about himself, started to understand his dad, but we have been given an insight into the cauldron of emotion where rock is born.

Frank Portman was born in 1964, and grew up in Millbrae, a small city on the far southern outskirts of San Francisco. He attended the University of California at Berkeley. While there, Frank formed a punk band called The Mr. T Experience. He now lives in Oakland, California with his wife, Bella, a painter, and is at work on a second novel..

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