Slouching Towards Bethlehem

Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion, 238 pages

Slouching Towards Bethlehem collects a series of Joan Didion's short essays from the 1960s, covering subjects from Alcatraz to Howard Hughes to the CPUSA, but mostly herself and triple-faced California - LA, San Francisco, and Sacramento.

The title essay relates the author's experiences exploring Haight-Ashbury during the Summer of Love, which exemplifies her overarching (but not overpowering) theme of the emptiness at the heart of '60s America, an emptiness so profound that even those who feel it - like those San Francisco hippies - lack the words to describe it or the means to escape it.  Yet the most remarkable piece may be "On Morality", in which she diagnoses American post-War social fragmentation, not as the result of a lack of morality, but the surfeit of it - innumerable competing individual moralities each demanding validation.

The Girls

The Girls by Emma Cline.  368 pages.

Northern California, at the end of the 1960s, seems to embody a combination of place and time where people kept finding themselves, or reinventing themselves, or just trying to figure out where and how they fit into the world.  Evie is no different.  A young teen, she thinks she's happy enough . . . until she spots a group of girls in the park who obviously seem much freer than Evie.  Soon, Evie starts hanging out with these girls and becomes especially attached to Suzanne, one of the older girls in the group.  Living in a ranch in the hills, Suzanne and the other girls are part of a larger group that are all drawn to Russell, a larger-than-life personality.  However, it's not an idyllic life and soon, it becomes clear that things are getting darker and more dangerous.  Question is: how far is Evie willing to go?

I felt the book is very well written, enough so that when I didn't really want to keep reading, I kept reading. Evie (as a character) can be very frustrating, even if you understand that she is motivated by a lack of sense of self.  It's sometimes hard to understand why she continues her connection to Suzanne and the others, although the way that those characters are written, you can grudgingly accept that Evie would have come under their spell.

This is the kind of book where when I was reading it, I could feel like I was there (and, in fact, sometimes, smell like I was there).  It's easy to become immersed in the story and the characters.  It's an insightful kind book, where there is no judgment, and no explaining things away.  Rather, it's a "this is what happened.  This is what I did and then when I looked back, I could see what was really happening" kind of story.  Evie makes some interesting observations about how society sees women and girls, and I think this made the story a more compelling read for me.

God's Forever Family

God's Forever Family: The Jesus People Movement in America by Larry Eskridge, 284 pages

It was inevitable, in hindsight, that the rising tide of Evangelical Christianity, which surged in the '50s and '60s, should encounter the counterculture explosion of the late '60s.  It was equally inevitable that some of the spiritual seekers of the counterculture would find their search leading to Christianity, particularly in some of its more enthusiastic, experiential forms.  At the time, however, to the long-hairs on the streets of Haight-Ashbury and the Sunday-best faithful listening to Billy Graham on the radio equally, it seemed unthinkable.  How it happened, how drug culture casualties seeking a fresh start and square missionaries seeking to connect with disaffected youth came together to become the "Jesus Freaks" or "Jesus People", is the subject of God's Forever Family.

The Jesus People are generally understood as either a footnote of evangelical history or a footnote of countercultural history, one of the many ephemeral phenomena of the '60s and '70s.  In addition to chronicling the movement's brief peak in the early '70s and its rapid disappearance from American cultural consciousness in the late '70s, Eskridge emphasizes its lasting aftereffects, on individuals as much as on the wider society, especially in the creation of a vibrant evangelical subculture and the rise of the seeker-oriented megachurch.

Rose Gold

Rose Gold: An Easy Rawlins Mystery by Walter Mosley   320 pages

L. A. private detective Easy Rawlins is back in his thirteenth adventure; the second after Mosley left readers believing Easy had perished after driving his car off a California cliff.  It’s only months after that near-death experience, and Easy is still recuperating.

Easy’s focus is no longer catching the bad guy but making a good life for his daughter, Feather, which includes getting her into a pricey private school. He needs money; not sure how he’s going to afford the tuition, but confident that he’ll find a way.

The story open with Easy moving to a newer home, not terribly far from his current address. He may be moving, but Easy is an simple man to find. He is approached by undercover police officer Roger Fisk and three other unidentified, plainclothes officers to find Rosemary Gold, the daughter of a very wealthy and very private munitions manufacturer. Readers should keep in mind that the novel takes place in the 1960s, at the height of Vietnam. I immediately thought of Patty Hearst and her 1974 kidnapping by the Symbionese Liberation Army. And while Rose Gold’s action takes place long before that event, I can’t help but wonder if Mosely wasn’t influenced by it. The revolutionary group who supposedly kidnapped the young heiress calls itself Scorched Earth, which again reminded me of the SLA.

Easy is reluctant to take the case; after all he is a black man who would be nosing into a white man’s business. He quickly changes his mind when he is offered an eight thousand dollar down payment on services rendered. This could be ticket to Feather’s education.

Needless to say, Easy finds himself involved in more than a mere kidnapping plot. Several other law enforcement agencies are either trying to buy him and his service or buy him off. Sometimes he isn’t sure exactly who he is working for nor exactly why he is y to Rosemary Gold

Mosley’s sentences are as colorful as the decade the action occurs. There’s the hippie subculture, plenty of drugs, tough guys who are hell bent on making a name for themselves in the neighborhood, and a fascinating subplot surrounding the last of an American Indian tribe who could almost be as dangerous as Easy’s friend, Mouse. And to top it off, Easy is in the doghouse with his girlfriend, Bonnie.

I give Easy Rawlins’ latest adventure 5 out of 5 stars.

Inherent Vice

Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon, 369 pages

From America's greatest living novelist comes the story of Doc, a private investigator - of sorts - in the Southern California of 1969, who becomes involved in a tangled set of schemes and plots drawing together missing real estate developers, possibly undead surf musicians, frozen-banana-loving crooked cops, seductive masseuses, and mysterious ships from the Bermuda Triangle (or close enough), all adrift in an ocean of drugs the size of the Pacific.

Indeed, there are so many drugs that the excess quickly tips over into parody.  There's also quite a bit of carefree sex, and some rock and roll, if you can dig it.  If nothing else, Inherent Vice is certainly a vibrant trip through a weird, wild, colorful world, and even if it is more Vineland than Gravity's Rainbow, Pynchon remains the poet laureate of the postmodern age of narcissism and paranoia.

The Bookseller

The Bookseller by Cynthia Swanson
352  Pages

Kitty/Katherine is the main character in a novel set in Denver in the 1960's.  Kitty is running a failing bookstore with her best friend Frieda when she starts to have spells where she imagines she has a different life.  She is married to Lars and has 3 children. She is more elegant and well-dressed but her friend Frieda is no longer a part of her life.  In this reality, things seem better but as time progresses it becomes apparent that there are troubles here as well.  

An interesting premise but not handled as well as Jo Walton's book "My Real Children".  

The Astronaut Wives Club

The Astronaut Wives Club by Lily Koppel, 272 pages

We've all remember stories about the first astronauts, those brave and crazy men who agreed to strap themselves to rockets and shoot off into the heavens. But we haven't heard as much about their wives, who required just as much courage, determination, and fortitude as their better-known spouses. The Astronaut Wives Club tells their story, starting with the wives of the original Mercury Seven and continuing through the Apollo missions. As their husbands were shot into space, these women were thrust into the spotlight, forced to put on a brave face and not let any cracks (in their marriages or in their own composure) show through.

This was a fascinating story, and showed just how difficult it was to keep up with the Ozzie-and-Harriet facade expected of these women. However, this also shows the bond that formed between these women, who would drop everything and show up at one of their compatriots' homes for a "deathwatch," as the woman's husband was shot into space. Usually, after I read a book, I switch to a different genre or topic. But this book has made me even more curious about the Space Race. That's high praise for this book.

Thunderball

Thunderball by Ian Fleming, 262 pages

By this point Fleming, and through him Bond, has come along way from the sexist and nearly racist person we saw in Casino Royale into an almost decent human being. Gone are the days of him saying women belong in the kitchen and not in the field to actively recruiting one to spy for him. Fleming does however return to describing card games which only he can keep interesting.

The overall plot is SPECTRE, SPecial Executive for Counter-intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion, has stolen two nuclear bombs and will destroy both property and a city if their demands are not met. Their demands are of course large amounts of money, in the form of gold. The Queen of England and the President of the United States, as they are demanding ransom from them as well, task all their agencies to solve who is behind this extortion and stop it before there is any loss of life.

So of course Bond, with the help of Felix Leiter, catch a lucky break and stumble upon the plan and SPECTRE themselves.

Thunderball looks into more of the life of James Bond as well. His excessive drinking, smoking and the injuries he has taken are taking their toll on him. Not only is he an alcoholic but he is also smoking up to sixty cigarettes a day. Fleming goes out of his way to point out that these are a type of blended cigarettes that are stronger than regular cigarettes as well. With all of this combining against him, he fails his health and fitness evaluation and must get treatment at a wellness center.

This is a departure from the Bond we see in the movies, that despite everything he is always fit and can do anything that needs done. But I can't see any of the Bond characters from the movies being able to smoke sixty cigarettes a day and still be able to chase people though the city.