''Great Jones Street'' is

Don DeLillo Donald Richard DeLillo (born November 20, 1936) is an American novelist, short story writer, playwright, screenwriter and essayist. His works have covered subjects as diverse as television, nuclear war, sports, the complexities of language, perf ...

's third novel, and was published in 1973. It centers on rock star Bucky Wunderlick, who also narrates the novel. There is a good deal of surreal imagery. '' Running Dog'', a parody of ''

Rolling Stone ''Rolling Stone'' is an American monthly magazine that focuses on music, politics, and popular culture. It was founded in San Francisco, California, in 1967 by Jann Wenner, and the music critic Ralph J. Gleason. It was first known for its ...

'' introduced in ''Great Jones Street'', would later play a central role in DeLillo's 1978 novel of the same name.

Plot and characters

Dissatisfied with the life that his fame, fortune, and revolutionary image has bought, Bucky Wunderlick retreats to an unfurnished apartment on Great Jones Street in

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

and tries to pare things down. A spokesperson for Happy Valley Farm Commune, named Skippy, delivers to Bucky for safekeeping a package containing a drug that debilitates the language centers of the brain. Wunderlick's iconic status in the counterculture, and his privateness, had attracted the attention of Happy Valley, a

domestic terrorist Domestic terrorism or homegrown terrorism is a form of terrorism in which victims "within a country are targeted by a perpetrator with the same citizenship" as the victims.Gary M. Jackson, ''Predicting Malicious Behavior: Tools and Techniques ...

organization. A

skinhead A skinhead is a member of a subculture which originated among working class youths in London, England, in the 1960s and soon spread to other parts of the United Kingdom, with a second working class skinhead movement emerging worldwide in th ...

-like offshoot known as the Dog Boys also rampages through his apartment building.

Bob Dylan Bob Dylan (legally Robert Dylan, born Robert Allen Zimmerman, May 24, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter. Often regarded as one of the greatest songwriters of all time, Dylan has been a major figure in popular culture during a career sp ...

is reputed to be one of the models for the character of Bucky Wunderlick. A key subplot involves the theft of Wunderlick's unreleased ''Mountain Tapes''. These are clearly inspired by Dylan's ''

The Basement Tapes ''The Basement Tapes'' is the sixteenth album by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan and his second with the Band. It was released on June 26, 1975, by Columbia Records. Two-thirds of the album's 24 tracks feature Dylan on lead vocals backed b ...

'', which would not be released until the summer of 1975 and were still shrouded in mystery. Ambitious but neurotic

guitarist A guitarist (or a guitar player) is a person who plays the guitar. Guitarists may play a variety of guitar family instruments such as classical guitars, acoustic guitars, electric guitars, and bass guitars. Some guitarists accompany themselv ...

Azarian reflects less-than-complimentary stories about The Band's

Robbie Robertson Jaime Royal "Robbie" Robertson, OC (born July 5, 1943), is a Canadian musician. He is best known for his work as lead guitarist and songwriter for the Band, and for his career as a solo recording artist. With the deaths of Richard Manuel in ...

. Wunderlick's characterization by withdrawal and contrariness fits the public image of Dylan. In the novel, Wunderlick's girlfriend Opel passes away from neglect of her health. She had arranged for the ''Mountain Tapes'' to arrive at Wunderlick's apartment for his birthday. The novel also covers his relationship with the other tenants in the building; upstairs lives a struggling author, and downstairs a mother who is ashamed of her disfigured son and keeps him locked in his room after she was unable to sell him to the circus. The ''Mountain Tapes'' are eventually destroyed by the Happy Valley commune. They also inject Wunderlick with a drug that affects the language center of the brain, so that he will no longer be able to form words, only meaningless noises. Near the end of the book the drug wears off and he begins to gain back his speech, beginning with the word "mouth". {{Don DeLillo 1973 American novels Novels by Don DeLillo Novels set in New York City Houghton Mifflin books Novels about music Postmodern novels