Rob Spillman, editor of Tin House magazine, has led a life defined by restless searching. Born in Germany to two extremely driven musicians, his childhood was spent among the West Berlin cognoscenti, in the epicenter of a city two hundred miles behind the Iron Curtain. There, the Berlin Wall stood as a stark reminder of the split between suppressed dreams and freedom of expression, and the artistic lives surrounding him never felt more authentic. From backstage dressing rooms to the front rows of concert halls, Spillman was inspired to live for artnothing was more romantic or ideal.
In his early twenties, after an unsettled youth moving between divorced parents and different homes, Spillman would eventually find his way into the literary world of New York City, only to abandon it to return to Berlin just months after the Wall came down. Twenty-five and newly married, Spillman and his wife, the writer Elissa Schappell, moved to the bullet-pocked streets of East Berlin on a hunt for the bohemian lifestyle of their artistic idols. But within Spillman’s constant striving for beauty, for inspiration, and for identityhe soon discovered he was chasing the one thing that had always eluded him: a place, or person, to call home.
In All Tomorrow’s Parties, Spillman traces his past to craft a deeply affecting coming-of-age portrait of an artist’s life that serves as an exhilarating cultural tour of the last quarter century through the lens of two transforming cities, drawing on musical inspiration from the Sex Pistols to Sonic Youth and the words of literary heroes such as Paul Bowles and Ken Kesey.
