Steve Erickson is the author of several novels, including Tours of the Black Clock, Rubicon Beach, The Sea Came in at Midnight, Our Ecstatic Days, and Arc d’X. His books have been translated into a dozen languages. He is the film critic for Los Angeles magazine and editor of the literary journal Black Clock, which is published by CalArts where he teaches writing. He lives with his family in Topanga Canyon.
United States
Steve Erickson
All Steve Erickson's books
Upcoming events
If there’s anything you’d like to know about LA, just ask Steve Erickson. He’s the ultimate observer of people, film, culture and detail when it comes to the City of Angels. Knowing...
The NBCC's Best Recommended List is now called NBCC's Good Reads. Steve Erickson's Zeroville is among the titles selected for winter. The NBCC is sponsoring events in 15 cities over the next month to...
Listen to interview
“Actions echo across time, continents and realities...a series of endless, astounding tessellations....The four central characters who provide the messy, vibrant heart...
Latest reviews
- Alchemy has acquired North American distribution rights to James Franco’s Hollywood-set dramedy “Zeroville” for a 2016 release. The film, based on the 2007 novel of the same name by Steve Erickson, stars Franco, Seth Rogen, Jacki Weaver, Megan Fox, Craig Robinson,...— Sep 12 2015
- The first book of our club is by Cal Arts teacher Steve Erickson. It is Easy Rider meets Raging Bull meets Being There. It follows a strange, talented editor with a tattoo of Monty Clift and Liz Taylor on the back of his head as he navigates the wild world of 1970s Hollywood.— Jun 19 2014
- “But years later, on a night in early November...” Steve Erickson’s latest novel begins in mid-thought, a rebuttal to a point we never got a chance to hear, or the counterpoint to a voice echoing in the novelist’s head, but invisible on the page. In so beginning...— Jul 10 2012
- Viewers have proved quite capable of processing the overlapping narratives and complicated timelines of movies such as “ Crash.” But almost a century after “ Ulysses,” any novel that plays with multiple points of view or challenges strict chronology is still...— Mar 29 2012
- font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }@font-face { font-family: "Garamond"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; } These Dreams of You, by Steve Erickson (Europa).— Mar 26 2012
- In 'These Dreams of You,' Steve Erickson writes incisively and movingly about issues of family and race, but the novel goes off the rails with tangents. Zan Nordhoc's unhappy family is certainly unhappy in its own ways in Steve Erickson's new novel "These Dreams...— Mar 23 2012
- Steve Erickson's terrific new novel These Dreams of You continues to gather stellar reviews. From the Austin Chronicle: "Only a genius of Steve Erickson's caliber could achieve such a profound, hilarious, heartbreaking, mind-bending, convincing, Custer's Last Stand,...— Mar 9 2012
- "I came of age when not only Kubrick and Arthur Penn meant more to me than Bellow and Updike (though not necessarily Pynchon and Dick), but Dylan and Ray Charles and the Doors and the Beatles meant more than any of them." Listen— Feb 12 2012
- Listen to interview “Actions echo across time, continents and realities...a series of endless, astounding tessellations....The four central characters who provide the messy, vibrant heart of the novel make up a representative tableau for the new millennium:...— Feb 12 2012
- You don’t need to read a word of Steve Erickson’s new novel to figure out that it’s broken. A quick flip through its pages reveals it to be fractured into hundreds of pieces, many no longer than a paragraph or two, each island of text banked by white space and heralded...— Feb 12 2012
- Although several of Steve Erickson’s books have been lauded on best-of-year lists, somehow his isn’t yet a household name, like Thomas Pynchon or the late David Foster Wallace, who have been both counted among his fans. “These Dreams of You,’’ his ninth novel and...— Feb 12 2012
- font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }@font-face { font-family: "Garamond"; }@font-face { font-family: "Garamond Premr Pro"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }...— Jan 4 2012
- Erickson (Zeroville) follows middle-aged Caucasian Alexander “Zan” Nordhoc’s adoption of a four year-old Ethiopian girl, beginning on the eve of Barack Obama’s election and leaping back 50 years and forward to a newly cross-cultural world. Daughter Sheba’s arrival...— Nov 28 2011
- Vikar Jerome arrives in 1969 Hollywood on a bus from Philadelphia. That alone is enough to make him an outsider among the hippies and burnouts, but there’s something even more peculiar about Vikar: His head is shaved, and on his scalp are Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor,...— Dec 15 2007
- There is no dearth of novels about Hollywood, but there are darn few good ones. This one is excellent. A man gets off a bus in Los Angeles in 1969. He has a shaved head and on his scalp is tattooed a picture of Montgomery Clift kissing Elizabeth Taylor in "A...— Dec 15 2007
- Film critic's novel mixes fiction and real-life Hollywood By Mark Lindquist Special to The Seattle Times Steve Erickson first came to my attention in Los Angeles in the mid-1980s. Almost all the readers I knew — and there are more readers in L.A. than people imagine...— Dec 8 2007
- Godard is in the details Surreal novelist Steve Erickson pens a plot-driven love letter to cinema. By Drew Toal Like most contemporary writers of speculative fiction, Steve Erickson toned his imaginative muscles by reading Jorge Luis Borges. “I first read Labyrinths...— Dec 7 2007
- EDITOR’S CUT The hero of Steve Erickson’s new novel is obsessed with movies. By Liesl Schillinger AHH, the lure of the madman-the harrowed, sinewy figure with glowing eyes who approaches out of the shadows, burning to communicate is communicable truth. Think...— Dec 2 2007
- Vikar, who has a close-up of Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift tattooed onto his shaved head, takes a bus from Philadelphia to Los Angeles to pursue his obsession with film. Within an hour of his arriving, a hippie mistakes the images for James Dean and Natalie Wood. Vikar...— Nov 21 2007
- Just when you thought that the Hollywood novel had fizzled out with all the eclat of an inebriated Mickey Rourke driving through Miami on a Vespa, another writer has come along with high-octane fuel for the form. Set mostly in Los Angeles between 1969 and 1982, the years...— Nov 18 2007
United States
