Alan Lord’s High Friends In Low Places captures the spirit of Montreal’s postpunk cultural world with its ties to New York in the 1970’s and 80’s. But even more, it captures the spirit of aspiration, possibility, excitement, joy and despair that comes from discovering high culture from the margins of working-class life in a small city. Lord offers brilliant and intimate portraits of friends famed and obscure, from William S. Burroughs to the late Québécois poet Mario Campo. Reflecting both the era’s mainstream underground values and the values of his Hochelaga neighborhood, he’s written a kind of definitive history.

OH MY GOD! This work is important. SO MUCH. I am hooked. It’s fucking exciting.

Engaging and fun to read. Very addictive, too. Love it! Brilliant writing. Wow, loving Alan’s memoir! So many great lines. He should be cranking out books all the time. Just saying.

Works like High Friends are invaluable; without them, crucial currents of non-mainstream social and cultural history would be largely confined to the fading memories of the surviving participants … what Lord achieved can be hard to wrap one’s head around. It’s as if Joey Ramone also happened to have overseen the construction of the Guggenheim.

Twenty years ago, Alan Lord wrote the first sentence of what would become his autobiography, fifteen words that already contained a whole program: “I smoked a joint with Burroughs at sunset and fucked Kathy Acker’s brains out at dawn.” How can you not want to read the rest?