More San Fran60s

Description

More SF60s

San Francisco in the Sixties, the Summer of Love, the birth of the hippies, experience it for yourself in More San Fran60s, a collection of autobiographical short stories and a continuation of San Fran60s. San Francisco in the Sixties was the epicenter of the biggest cultural transformation of the second half of the Twentieth Century, and of course it has had its memoirs and histories, but this is the only time a participant has used the devices of literary fiction to put you there, living it.
Like San Fran60s, More San Fran60s is darker, edgier, and more intimate than anything on the subject before. In addition to the requisite sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll, there is murder, madness, and God. One of the murders officially ends the Summer of Love. Jim Morrison makes an appearance, as do William Burroughs and Janis Joplin in the San Fran60s. LSD and free love, Haight-Ashbury and the Hell’s Angels, the Hip and the Straight, it’s all in these stories.
And it all really happened. The stories are based on my journals and experiences and there is less invention than in most memoirs. I have lived in and around San Francisco since 1965 and present myself, friends, and acquaintances as prime specimens. In the Sixties and Seventies, I was a free lance journalist, among other things. Now I am a retired English teacher.
Among the stories in More San Fran 60s, there is “Long Hair,” in which a groupie, who is also a PhD candidate, is in love with a guy she finds repulsive because his hair isn’t long enough. In “The Magic Mountain Music Festival and Fantasy Fun Faire,” it’s the first ever hip outdoor rock concert, headlined by the Doors, and the chick he didn’t dare even fantasize about has chosen him. Or has she? In “There Is Only One Misfortune” two men, a brilliant mystic, who is also a successful businessman, and a hippie intellectual, try to reach an ultimate understanding of the universe in a single, brutal eight hour argument. “The Neocon” is a character study spanning four decades from the Sixties in San Francisco through atrocity-ravaged Guatemala to Washington today.
The stories range in tone from comic to harrowing to lyrical. All are interconnected but each is self-contained so they can be read in any order. These collections could be thought of as a fractured novel in which even the narrative structure expresses that era.
Now read on and experience it for yourself.

Reviews

Rating: 5 / 5
Date: 2010-08-23
Summary: "Review of More San Fran 60s"

I've known the author of this book and its companion piece since the mid-sixties. We went to college together. These books do an unbelievably good job of capturing the feel of the 60s. The pace is perfect. The rhythm is perfect. The books are close to flawless. And some of the images are searing - they stick with you for days after you read them.