About The Book

John Krich’s Music in Every Room depicts the disappointments and corruptions of modern travel. “This quirky, querulous and oddly appealing travelogue” (The Boston Globe) charts Krich’s journey across Asia with his irascible, courageous girlfriend, Iris, an ex-cheerleader turned mystic from Liberty, Texas. These two abandon Berkeley for uneasy locales where the first and third worlds rarely butt heads, thus abandoning air conditioning and all the other assumptions and comforts of home. They acquire blisters in the Himalayas and dengue fever in Bali, smoke opium with a suspected CIA agent and fend off the supplications of lost hippies and Gandhian holy men alike. They discover that the Pomp and Joy Lodge in Taramarang harbors bedbugs, and the famed shadow puppets of Indonesia take second billing to reruns of “I Dream of Jeannie.” What they don’t find is nirvana, satori, or freedom from the crassness of the West.

Praise

“John Krich breathes life into his words. His voice is uniquely his own.” –Studs Terkel

“Absolutely marvelous…a kind of Divine Comedy in which everyone has strayed from the straight path, and we are all punished for the sins of the twentieth century. And yet Krich is not bitter, and his book is wonderful.” –The New York Times

“A kind of ultimate travel book, very American. That is, more S.J. Perelman than Bruce Chatwin. I like it enormously.” –Susan Sontag

“A delightful armchair journey quite unlike any other–youthful, romantic, radical, cynical, at times rich with verbal pyrotechnics . . . utterly hilarious. Many who have experienced his kind of backpack travel through Asia will laugh out loud through this book.” –The San Francisco Chronicle

“There is a lot of wry and a good deal of earthy humor. . . . Mr. Krich is at his best when he is his caustic, observant self.” –The New York Times Book Review