Tag: hippies

book reviews, books2 Comments

Digging Deeper: A Memoir of the Seventies, by Peter Weissman

driftlessareareview

Peter Weissman’s I Think, Therefore Who Am I? took place during the Summer of Love.  It was an intimate exploration of the Sixties, the most glorified or vilified decade in recent history, depending on how far one lives from Real America™ (patent pending).  His second volume of memoirs, Digging Deeper: a Memoir of the Seventies, chronicles Weissman’s life during a decade not liked by anyone, except perhaps the occasional roaming hipster burnishing his or her sense of ironic superiority. The memoir begins with Weissman crawling from the muck of hallucinogenic incoherence.  Weissman’s inability to speak to others provides a dark … Continue reading Digging Deeper: A Memoir of the Seventies, by Peter Weissman

Rate this:

book reviews, books, Permanent PressLeave a comment

The Reckoning by Howard Owen

driftlessareareview

In Howard Owen’s ninth novel, The Reckoning, the lives of George James and Freeman Hawk meet again after decades of separation.  Freeman was an African-American civil rights activist who fled to Canada to avoid getting drafted.  George James was a scion of the old money South and an heir to the Old Dominion Ham Company.  Owen shifts between past and present, reflecting the tense relationship between George James, widowed and alcoholic, and his son Jake.  Freeman Hawk returned to George, but George’s idealization of Freeman makes the opaque circumstances harder to pick up.  George tells Jake how Freeman led the … Continue reading The Reckoning by Howard Owen

Rate this:

book reviews, books, Critical Appraisals, nature, TV3 Comments

Critical Appraisal: The Landscape of Hell

driftlessareareview

The representation of Hell as a cartographic region has its origins in Dante’s Divine Comedy.  Dante adapted the imagery already present in medieval painting and sculpture to comment on his political situation and his own scientific and theological beliefs.  He populated it with real people, including political heroes and villains, good popes and bad popes, adulterous princesses, and monsters human and mythological.  On Dante’s spiritual journey, he traveled with the Roman poet Vergil down the various circles of Hell and then up Mount Purgatory.  Finally, led by his beloved Beatrice, he journeyed through the heavenly spheres until he was in … Continue reading Critical Appraisal: The Landscape of Hell

Rate this:

book reviews, books, Permanent PressLeave a comment

Elysiana by Chris Knopf

driftlessareareview

The novel Elysiana is about the eponymous barrier island off the coast of South Jersey.  Chris Knopf, known for the Sam Acquillo Hamptons Mystery novels, has written a self-contained novel set in the summer of 1969.  It begins with Midwestern girl Gwendolynn Anders suffering a bad drug trip.  Time loses coherence as Gwendolynn experiences memories and flashbacks, seeing herself at a party, and then finding herself in the back of car.  She gradually regains control of her mental faculties and then realizes she is on Elysiana.  The island, only twenty-five miles long and a mile wide, presents a microcosm of … Continue reading Elysiana by Chris Knopf

Rate this:

book reviews, books, film, The Internet, TVLeave a comment

Grand New Party by Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam @ Joe Bob Briggs

driftlessareareview

The United States has a lot of problems. On occasion, someone might have a bright idea on how to solve those problems. The book asserting it can fix all America’s problems is Grand New Party: How Republicans can win the working class and save the American Dream by Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam. The main idea of Grand New Party is for the GOP to offer an agenda that would help a pan-ethnic working class. Unfortunately, it seems that the people most in need of reading this book have not done so. Arizona attempted to solve its immigration problem in … Continue reading Grand New Party by Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam @ Joe Bob Briggs

Rate this:

book reviews, books, Critic's Notebook, film, food, The Internet, TV1 Comment

Critic’s Notebook: Unpopular Causes, Part I

driftlessareareview

“In place of a hermeneutrics we need an erotics of art.” – “Against Interpretation” [1964], Susan Sontag Challenges and Non-Responses The job of the critic is, by turns, tastemaker, evangelist, and champion.  The best critics harness the powers of intellection and enthusiasm to inform his or her readership on a work’s merits.  If a work receives more merits than demerits, than, in a roughly mathematical fashion, the creator obtains a “good review.”  This reviewer finds works with “mixed reviews” or polarizing reactions (see Jonathan Littell’s The Kindly Ones) most attractive, since “mixed reviews” are not sure things.  A tiny element … Continue reading Critic’s Notebook: Unpopular Causes, Part I

Rate this:

book reviews, books, film3 Comments

I Think, Therefore Who Am I?: Memoir of a Psychedelic Year, by Peter Weissman

driftlessareareview

In the film The Limey (Steven Soderbergh, 1999), the record producer Terry Valentine offers his girlfriend an evocative speech describing the Sixties. “Did you ever dream about a place you never really recall being to before?  A place that maybe only exists in your imagination?  Some place far away, half remembered when you wake up.  When you were there, though, you knew the language.  You knew your way around.  That was the sixties.” After a pause, he continues.  “No.  It wasn’t that either.  It was just ’66 and early ’67.  That’s all there was.”  Peter Weissman’s memoir I Think, Therefore … Continue reading I Think, Therefore Who Am I?: Memoir of a Psychedelic Year, by Peter Weissman

Rate this:

book reviews, books, Critical Appraisals, film, TVLeave a comment

Vineland and the Pynchon Canon: A Critical Appraisal

driftlessareareview

Introduction: “The bums lost.” The Big Lebowski: Your revolution is over, Mr. Lebowski. Condolences. The bums lost. My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski? The Dude walks out and shuts the door. The Big Lebowski: The bums will always lose! Brandt: How was your meeting, Mr. Lebowski? The Dude: Okay. The old man told me to take any rug in the house. The Big Lebowski (1998) – Los Bros. Coen In 1990 saw the publication of Vineland, by Thomas Pynchon.  The novel concerned the … Continue reading Vineland and the Pynchon Canon: A Critical Appraisal

Rate this:

book reviews, booksLeave a comment

An Adultery (1987) by Alexander Theroux

driftlessareareview

Alexander Theroux’s name returned to the news with the publication of Laura Worholic; or, The Sexual Intellectual. The 878-page work can be intimidating to readers, especially those unfamiliar with Theroux’s bombastic, encyclopedic, maximalist style.  A gateway to his larger works would be An Adultery, written more than two decades earlier and less than half the length of Laura Worholic.  The writing is as straightforward as the slip of a plot. Painter Christian Ford loves Farol Colorado.  Farol is married and Christian is going out with Marina.  Complications ensue.  While the adulterous male narrator may be one of the most clichéd … Continue reading An Adultery (1987) by Alexander Theroux

Rate this: