Quantum Criminals is one of the sharpest, funniest, and best books ever about any rock artist.
Having made several attempts to concoct a blurb that might display some of the thoughtfulness, cleverness, craft, wit, style, and strong point of view that are the hallmarks both of this book and of the band it so fiercely and fannishly and lovingly analyzes, I’m just going to give up and write the simple truth: I adored it.
~Michael Chabon
Like most hardcore Steely Dan aficionados, I usually think anybody else's opinion on Steely Dan is misinformed, poorly considered, or just wrong. So it is with profound surprise, and a mild resentment born of great pleasure, that I must report having found Quantum Criminals fascinating, illuminating, edifying, generally meticulous, and only very occasionally dead wrong. An indispensable volume for anybody who's ever stayed up late obsessing about this most delightful of bands. Don't tell the others I said this.
Steely Dan has always sounded like the future, a phenomenon that makes me want to dissect their past to see how they got there. They’re a band with a thousand wormholes, and Alex Pappademas explores every one of them. With luminous illustrations by Joan LeMay, Quantum Criminals is a strange and fascinating love story worthy of the Dan.
To classify this book as interesting would be as reductionist as calling a Steely Dan album well-produced. The illustrations are fantastic and the writing is sublime: interpretive portraits of people who don't exist, a deep history of two geniuses impossible to understand, and the sharpest criticism ever published about a catalog of songs that actively defy analysis. A perfect book about perfect music.
~Chuck Klosterman
The shibboleth of Steely Dan, spelled out across fifty years and nine records, can’t be explained or sold: if you know, you know. And if you know… rejoice. Quantum Criminals is a fiend folio for Dan freaks, an astonishing, joyous, vibrant book capturing the Becker and Fagan canon of cosmic losers, doomed loners, jazz narcs, and star-bummers, along with half the truth and all the bullshit that makes being into Steely Dan such a delightful, unsolvable puzzle. Alex writes like Iain Sinclair in the streets and Greil Marcus in the sheets; Joan paints like Steve Keene doing a presidential portrait of Maira Kalman. Of course. Who better? Who else? They know, too. Like the man says, if it good to ya, it gotta be good for ya—and this book is very, very good.
Weird and wondrous...Quantum Criminals fairly drips with information…and I have drunk it in eagerly...The writing in Quantum Criminals is often arresting and always engaging pop-music journalism...Quantum Criminals is a reminder that one can be massively fulfilled by language one doesn’t fully comprehend.
~New York Times
Pappademas offers a lively series of ruminations about individual songs, loosely pegged to the characters who populate those songs and who are rendered in playfully detailed and colorful portraits by LeMay. The result is both a celebration and an artifact of the current Steely Dan moment...In sharp and funny chapters, Pappademas riffs on [Steely Dan's] cast of characters in ways that capture the band’s cultural context and musical debts.
[Quantum Criminals] uncovers the vast constellation of lyrical references, artistic influences and social and political contexts surrounding the band and its music.
Wry, playful but deeply incisive...Fagen, Becker...and Pappademas are kindred spirits, smartass, sharp-eyed observers of life’s El Supremos—a description that suits other Dan fans as well. Quantum Criminals is like a secret handshake between two covers. The best part is that it illuminates details the rest of us may have glossed over for years.
In one fell swoop, [Quantum Criminals] has become the essential Steely Dan book. And you should absolutely be reading it right now...Pappademas and LeMay leave no stones unturned in their quest to unlock every mythological quadrant of Steely Dan’s immense, decades-long artistic conceptions.
A whimsical plunge into one of America’s most unconventional rock bands...[A] delicious deep dive into the many protagonists in the 'Steely Daniverse'...LeMay’s vibrant paintings—more than 100 of which are included in the book—provide yet another kaleidoscopic lens through which to consider the duo’s wild imaginations. Any major dude will tell you that this is a solid and highly entertaining take on Fagen and Becker’s 'platonic love story.'
[An] engaging and illuminating way to tell the band's history...Quantum Criminals is undoubtedly the best thing I’ve ever read about this endearingly strange and endlessly fascinating band.
An engrossing series of essays that innovatively chart the cosmology of Donald Fagen and Walter Becker’s musical universe…[A] terrific and irresistible book.
Remarkable...we finally have a book about Steely Dan in which the writing and art fully measure up to the sophistication and beauty of Becker and Fagen’s music...Pappademas’s incisive, elegant prose poetry pairs perfectly with LeMay’s colorful hand-painted portraits that offer humorous and empathetic glimpses of the Dan’s menagerie of luckless pedestrians.
~Expanding Dan
Wonderfully weird and insightful...the Steeliest of all the Steely Dan books out there. And it’s wholly refreshing...There have been a number of fine books on Steely Dan, but Quantum Criminals is the one whose spirit, vivacity, and off-kilterness matches its subjects and their body of work.
~Houston Press
Steely Dan fans should love this book. And if you’re not a fan of that non-band band, but love good writing about rock music, Quantum Criminals is still worth reading.
~Milwaukee Shepherd Express
These song-based essays are part band biography, trenchant culture criticism, poignant ‘70s history, and psychedelic tone poems. Like Steely Dan’s tunes, they toe the line between an unbridled reverence for the music and esoteric sensibilities. I read it in a day and came out with an even deeper respect for their catalog.
This is the finest piece of rock journalism that I have read in a long time.
Alex Pappademas reveals the stories behind many of [Steely Dan's] songs and, in the process, gives us a book that shows what the right kind of obsession leads to—joyful, contagious passion. Featuring terrific illustrations by Joan LeMay, this is a fascinating, fun, and deep dive into the stories behind the music and the men who created it...After you read this book, you’ll never be able to forget the genius of these two writers.
~Air Mail
For those who are anywhere from casual listeners to hardcore Dan Fans, this book is an unceasing delight from cover to cover…Engrossing, well-written, with vivid, whimsical illustrations, Quantum Criminals is the literary equivalent of a Steely Dan album: vibrant, a little strange, and nearly perfect.
~Spectrum Culture
Writer Alex Pappademas and painter Joan Lemay...go beyond explanation to produce the definitive Danomicon with this expansively argued and vibrantly illustrated survey of the songs, lyrics and characters populating the whole Steely Dan catalog.
~Tertulia
Whether you count the current Danaissance as something entirely new or another turn in a recurring cycle, and even if you’re among those who find the band too weird or jazzy, it’s undeniable the Dan endures. Quantum Criminals is an entertaining and insightful account of why.
~The Washington Free Beacon
The book is as smooth and intriguing as Gaucho, a combination of sophisticated thinking, clear language, and a calm view of the dark interior of this band. All of it is told through a series of connected biographies that are based on each song that the band recorded . . . and that give the musicians involved, the cultural views accumulated, and Pappademas’s own journey, significant roles in what is a great and complex story. The book will be terrifically satisfying to any and all Dan fans in the way that having one’s own experiences and perceptions acknowledged and validated is, but it goes far beyond hagiography.
~The Brooklyn Rail
The new book, Quantum Criminals: Ramblers, Wild Gamblers, and other Sole Survivors From the Songs of Steely Dan, is the delightful result of an author not only understanding their subject, but emotionally bonding with it. In this case, it’s the two co-authors, Alex Pappademas (who writes the words) and Joan LeMay (who paints the pictures). . . Quantum Criminals understands the paradoxical nature of Steely Dan, and the book embraces that chaos. It’s not a paean to “great men” of classic rock, nor is it a fan service love letter. But it is most definitely the right book about the correct band.
~The Daily Beast
There have been a number of fine books on Steely Dan, but Quantum Criminals is the one whose spirit, vivacity, and off-kilterness matches its subjects and their body of work.
~Classic Rock Bob
[An] ultra-cool hybrid of music criticism and pop art...For older fans, who remember when 'Rikki Don't Lose That Number' owned the airwaves in spring 1974, Quantum Criminals is like a tour guide with a music geek friend whose fresh outlook about songs you've heard hundreds of times enables you to experience elements of their greatness for the first time.
~New Hampshire Union Leader
