The Perfect Fool is the first novel by
comedian and
music journalist Stewart Lee (of the double act
Lee And Herring)
It tells the story of two musicians, Sid and Danny, who quit their job in a Dire Straits tribute band to go to America to search for Luther Peyote, a reclusive legend of acid rock who is Sid's hero.
Characters who get wrapped up in this include:
An amnesiac astronaut who was part of a Masonic conspiracy to retrieve the Holy Grail from space, where it had been sent by NASA
A woman who played a nun in a porn film where she had sex with a pig
Sherrif Matthew Hopkins, a religious maniac who is searching for a serial killer who no-one else believes exists
A Hopi clown
And Luther Peyote himself who is definitely not in any way meant to be Roky Erickson - there are just a few minor simillarities, like they were both pioneers of psychedelia, both were on International Artists records, both were arrested for drug possession, both pled insanity and both had ECT which sent them insane.
Oh, and half of Peyote's quotes come word for word from a 1995 interview with Erickson in MOJO magazine...
The book is fairly funny, as one would expect from Lee, and while bizarre, is tightly plotted. It might appeal to the same sort of people who like Preacher graphic novels, although it is far less violent than these. It does however have a flaw, in that it seems to have been written with at least one eye on a film adaptation.