John Walters's Blog, page 20

Book Review: Like a Rolling Stone: A Memoir by Jann S. Wenner; Part One: The Era

I have recently read several histories and memoirs of the 1960s and 1970s, some of which are newly published. For instance, Whole Earth: The Many Lives of Stewart Brand by John Markoff tells of the entrepreneurial creator of the influential Whole Earth Catalog in the sixties; Inventor of the Future: The Visionary Life of Buckminster Fuller by Alec Nevala-Lee concerns an architect and author widely respected by the sixties counterculture; A Long Strange Trip: The Inside History of the Grateful Dead by Dennis McNally is about the acid rock band most closely associated with Ken Kesey, the Merry Pranksters, and the Acid Tests; and Rock Me on the Water: 1974: The Year Los Angeles Transformed Movies, Music, Television, and Politics by Ronald Brownstein studies a brief period in media history when the ideals of the 1960s sprouted forth into the mainstream in the form of provocative films, TV, and music. The era of the late sixties and early seventies fascinates me because it was so influential in the evolution of my own thoughts, impressions, and life direction.

And now we have another fascinating tome written by a germinal figure from that time. Like a Rolling Stone is the memoir of Jann S. Wenner, the man who founded Rolling Stone magazine in 1967 and continued to publish and edit it until recently. I’m less than a hundred pages in so far and I can already tell that it is my cup of tea. I haven’t even got to the creation of the magazine yet but Wenner has already plunged readers into the political and cultural heart of the 1960s. He was there at precisely the right moment in time to be immersed in the prevalent usage of marijuana and LSD and other drugs, the rise of now-famous Bay Area rock bands, the Acid Tests, Ken Kesey’s psychedelic and anarchistic hangout at La Honda, and the Free Speech Movement and other protests at the Berkeley campus of the University of California. When he was still an adolescent Wenner decided to be a journalist, so he was able to see all these changes around him not only from the perspective of a hippie heavily into psychedelics and other drugs (which he was), but also from the viewpoint of a writer chronicling the events of a certain significant historical era.

As I said, I haven’t even reached the part where he starts up the magazine yet, but already the story has swept me back to a time that was intensely formative for so many Baby Boomers. It reminds me of the relaxing vibes of hippie enclaves, abortive attempts to practice free love, confusing over-usage of hallucinogenic substances, the dark threat of getting drafted and sent off to Vietnam, and the ultimate assimilation of the trappings of hippie culture into the mainstream. Personally, in the mid-seventies I left the United States to find my voice as a writer and discover what the rest of the world was like, and I didn’t return for thirty-five years. In the meantime, Wenner created one of the most influential and iconic magazines ever published.

Another Look: America Redux: Impressions of the United States After Thirty-Five Years Abroad by John Walters

Update February 25th, 2023: The U.S. political and social landscape continues to quake, and this book retains its relevance.

Update February 15th, 2020: For some reason I had a strong urge to repost this description of the memoir I wrote upon returning to the United States after spending thirty-five years overseas. Perhaps it’s due to the sense of displacement and culture shock that I still go through from time to time; perhaps, however, it’s also due to the political and social upheaval currently erupting across the U.S. landscape, a displacement and loss of identity that is causing everyone to question their core values and beliefs.

A memoir of my culture shock after living for many years overseas. Here’s the back cover copy:

In 1976 John Walters left the United States in search of adventure and literary inspiration. He lived for many years in India, Bangladesh, Italy, and Greece. He married and had five sons. Finally, faced with the economic catastrophe in Greece and the lack of opportunities for his sons, he returned to the land of his birth. Without home, without job, without resources, he confronted his own country as if for the first time.

This is a memoir of someone who, late in life, was forced to leave everything behind and start fresh in what for him had become a new land. It will appeal to those who are confronted with major life changes in these troubled economic times; to those who, though they may desire rest and retirement, must continue toiling to make ends meet; for those who desire insight into the vast, multifaceted culture of the United States from a fresh perspective, unencumbered by familiarity.

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Book Review: Rock Me on the Water: 1974: The Year Los Angeles Transformed Movies, Music, Television, and Politics by Ronald Brownstein

Whether or not its premise is entirely accurate, this book is brilliant. The premise is embodied in the subtitle. According to Brownstein, 1974 was the pivotal year in which Los Angeles became the epicenter of the entertainment industry and radically altered perceptions and directions in films, TV, music, and politics. Each month has its chapter and focuses on a distinct industry. To prove his points, Brownstein elicits examples of major players such as Warren Beatty, Jack Nicholson, Robert Altman, Steven Spielberg, Bert Schneider, and numerous others in film; Norman Lear, James L. Brooks, and others in television; Linda Ronstadt, Jackson Browne, Joni Mitchell, the Eagles, and Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young in music; and Tom Hayden, Jane Fonda, and governor Jerry Brown in politics. He delves into the making of such hits as Chinatown, The Godfather Part II, Nashville, Shampoo, Jaws, and Hearts and Minds; All in the Family, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and MASH; and several of the rock albums that defined the era.

In 1974 I was twenty-one years old. I was back living and working in Seattle after my one drug-suffused year of college in northern California. At that time I had substituted drinking for drugs, for the most part at least, and on the weekends I’d go out with a buddy and one girlfriend or another to bars and parties and invariably over-imbibe. I was in a stage of transition – aimless in a sense I suppose, but I already knew I wanted to be a writer, and the thoughts and ambitions I was formulating would eventually, in a year or two, propel me out onto the open road to Central America, Europe, the Middle East, and the Indian Subcontinent. In the meantime, besides the books that I voraciously devoured, I followed what was happening in popular culture. I remember most of these artists that Brownstein tells of and what my attitude had been towards them. What fascinated me as I read the back stories behind the seminal works of the period is how Brownstein amalgamates all these efforts into a coherent picture of what underlying artistic and historic trends were the motivations for these outstanding efforts. His research is exhaustive. When writing of Shampoo, for instance, he delves into producer and actor Warren Beatty’s entire career and the decisions that brought him to create this singular film. Likewise when telling the story of the radical political efforts of Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden, he traces their personal histories so that readers understand what brought them together and caused them to unite romantically and in protest of the war in Vietnam. He also delves into the difficulties that women and Black artists experienced, as for the most part during this era they were shut out of positions of responsibility in the entertainment industry.

I experienced intense nostalgia as I read this book. Not that things were so much better for me back in 1974. I was messed up in a lot of ways; one of the main reasons is that I was clinging to the past and had not yet cut loose and gone out to seek my destiny. But there were good times too, and some of those good times were when I would get lost while experiencing absorbing films, TV, and music.

Book Review: Miracle Country: A Memoir by Kendra Atleework

The discovery of a wonderful new book and writer is always cause for rejoicing. This book I came across by accident. I was looking for another volume in the same section of the library; the title caught my attention, I briefly browsed the blurbs, and I grabbed it. These days I have become pickier in my reading; I am more likely to begin a book and toss it aside if it doesn’t draw me in. For this reason, for every book I read I bring two or three home from the library. I peruse them carefully when I get home, and try to feast on only the best.

This book, as I said, was a revelation. It celebrates California, but not all of California. It focuses on the particular area where the author was born and raised, which is Owen Valley on the east side of the Sierra Nevada mountain range, a desert land with extremes of hot and cold, magnificent mountains on either side, and a proclivity for natural disasters such as drought, flooding, and wildfires. Owen Valley used to be verdant and productive, but as Atleework relates, William Mulholland, the hero of Los Angeles, decided that the valley’s abundant water could better serve “the greatest good for the greatest number” by being diverted via pipelines to feed the growing city of Los Angeles. As a result, Los Angeles became the well-watered city of the stars and Owen Valley became a wasteland where only certain peculiar types of people, as well as the Native Americans who were there before anyone else, preferred to live.

Atleework chronicles the horrendous theft of the valley’s water by the greedy Los Angeles municipality and describes how harsh the land became because of the subsequent aridity. However, that is not the main point of the book. To her Owen Valley, and in particular the towns of Swall Meadows and Bishop, is home. To her it is not a barren wasteland but a marvelous landscape with incredible depth and beauty, a place to which she is drawn despite her wanderings for education and work to L.A., San Diego, and Minnesota. She is emotionally attached to the land, and when she writes of it, the narrative takes on the nature of a love story: love of family and home.

She tells the tale of Owen Valley through her own stories and those of her father, mother, sister, and brother. Her father and mother both fell in love with the land before falling in love with each other. They raised their children with the same reverence, taking them on outdoor activities such as hiking, swimming, fishing, dirt biking, and so on. Her mother died young, but Atleework honors her spirit in these pages. Her brother was adopted. Her parents did not know his background at first, but he turned out to be descended from the local Paiute Indians, and as he grew up, he began to spend more and more time on the nearby reservation. He frequently got into trouble and was relegated to juvenile detention centers and to prison. While telling of her brother, Atleework describes the horrific way that the First People in the area were treated, but also how their love of the land caused them to stay where they were despite their abuse by authorities and the desiccation of the landscape.

All of these threads of descriptions of the landscape, the history of the area, the gruesome treatment of Native Americans, the traumas and triumphs her family went through, and the author’s journeys that always led back home are woven together into a complex yet compelling narrative. Atleework is one hell of a writer; her style is poetic but accessible, meandering but focused, and intensely personal but at the same time universal. She is an excellent writer who has written an excellent book. I can only hope that there will be more.

Another Look at Bedlam Battle: An Omnibus of the One Thousand Series

Four science fiction thrillers in one volume

This omnibus includes:

The One Thousand:  Book 1

It is the late 1960s…

What better place than prison to recruit psychopathic killers?  So thinks Benny, possessed by a thousand alien entities which he intends to share around with the other inmates before unleashing hell on Earth in the form of a murderous rampage.  Only William Stafford, a Vietnam War veteran unjustly convicted of killing a girlfriend, can stop him.  But to do so he has to break back into the prison he has just escaped from…

The One Thousand:  Book 2:  Team of Seven

A team composed of countercultural humans and benevolent aliens based out of Haight/Ashbury hunt for murderous, alien-possessed convicts with enhanced powers who have escaped from prison.  They discover that this fellowship of psychopaths is preparing an elaborate party for hippies and other street people in a remote mansion built to simulate a Medieval castle, and that they are planning to slaughter everyone who attends.  Now the seven are faced with the task of locating the mansion and stopping the killers…

The One Thousand:  Book 3:  Black Magic Bus

To escape pursuit, the fellowship of psychopaths has fled to Europe.  In the mountains of Italy they customize a psychedelically-colored tour bus, intending not only to pick up and murder unwary young travelers, but deliver a cargo of lethal pathogens to a major city in the East.  Only the Team of Seven composed of enhanced humans and benevolent aliens can find and stop them…

The One Thousand: Book 4: Deconstructing the Nightmare

Their hunt for a group of alien-possessed psychopaths intent on igniting a rampage of mass murder leads the Team of Seven to a prison in Turkey, war-ravaged Vietnam, a luxurious nuclear fallout shelter, and finally to direct confrontation with their enemies.

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Book Review: Haven: A Novel by Emma Donoghue

Haven is a unique and extraordinary book. It is in the nature of a quest, a hero’s journey undertaken by three monks in the seventh century in Ireland. A man named Artt, a renowned visitor to a monastery on the mainland, claims to have had a dream in which he and two followers embark upon a journey in a small boat down the river to the sea and there discover an isolated island they can dedicate to the Lord. He chooses Cormac, an old monk with abundant practical skills, and a young monk named Trian to aid him in his search. With few belongings they travel southwest along the river and out into the open Atlantic Ocean, where they find Great Skellig, a rocky island full of crags and cliffs.

Donoghue has based her novel on historical and geographical facts. Great Skellig, also known as Skellig Michael, is a real place, and the remains of an ancient monastery rest on a plateau high above the sea. If you’re a science fiction fan, you’ve probably seen it, because scenes of Luke Skywalker’s exile in Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Star Wars: The Last Jedi were filmed there. The movies offer a good view of the grandeur and isolation of the steep, forbidding island.

In Haven, Donoghue posits that the three monks in her story are the first to reach the island. They climb the steep hillsides and cliffs without the benefit of stairs and sleep out in the open air until they have constructed a stone shelter. To survive, they plant a garden in the meager soil, go fishing, and hunt for seabirds and their eggs. Whatever they need they have to find on the almost bare rock.

The conflict in the tale comes from Artt’s arrogance, pomposity, and self-righteousness. The other two men have sworn obedience to him, but he cares little about their trust and devotion. Instead of seeing to the needs of his miniscule flock, which is struggling to survive in a harsh environment, he cares more about sculpting stone crosses, building a chapel, and copying passages of scripture. He refuses to allow the monks to make trips back to the mainland to trade for food, fuel, and other needs, instead claiming that God will provide while their supplies dwindle and disappear. For a time they are able to improvise, using driftwood for fuel and then the bodies of oil-rich birds, but when the weather begins to turn chill and most of the birds leave, they are left without sufficient sustenance or the means to cook whatever they manage to find. Through it all, Artt remains haughty and indifferent, claiming that the hardships his monks endure are good for their souls and doing nothing to alleviate their suffering. In the end… Well, I won’t give away the ending because it is dynamic, unforeseen, and inevitable.

This book succeeds well on two levels. First of all, it is a fascinating tale of an adventurous quest and survival in a forbidding environment. In addition, it vividly portrays the conflict between legalism and grace, and between self-righteousness and mercy, as opposing ways to look at religious issues. All in all, it is a powerful, well-written book and I recommend it.

Book Review: Small Game by Blair Braverman

This novel is fairly short, fast-paced, and very entertaining. It concerns a woman named Mara who teaches survival skills at a facility called Primal Instinct. She is approached by a casting team of a new reality show, Civilization. Together with four other contestants, she is flown deep into the northern woods. Clad in lightweight uniforms, they are each given one tool, no food, and told they have to somehow live off the land for six weeks. If they manage it, they each win one hundred thousand dollars, which Mara sees as sufficient funds to escape from an unfulfilling relationship. One of the five leaves almost immediately, but the others stick it out. At first their only food consists of a few wild plants that Mara finds, while they lose weight and strength, and then they manage to catch a few fish. Then, inexplicably, the producer and photographers leave and don’t return, and Mara and her three teammates have to fend for themselves in a hostile environment.

Small Game is unpretentious from a literary standpoint; the prose is straightforward and without refinements, but the lean style suits the story. The characters too are pared down to essentials; they have to learn to get along and work together to be able to cope with the hostile, or rather indifferent, environment into which the show’s producer has cast them. Since the crew abruptly vanishes without warning, they are left to speculate about what might have happened and whether they should stay where they are or attempt to hike out.

Braverman is uniquely qualified to pen this tale; she is writing about what she knows. She is a dogsled racer and adventurer who has written extensively about survival in harsh environments. As a result, the novel has a strong sense of verisimilitude. It is easy to become immersed in the landscape and the struggle for survival in which the characters find themselves. It reminded me of the escapist stories of Jack London, to whom Braverman has been compared by Publisher’s Weekly. (The specific term the periodical used was “a 21st-century feminist reincarnation of Jack London.)

London attributed the popularity of his tales to “death appeal.” In other words, readers craved the sensation of facing death in harsh situations without really being in harm’s way. That’s one of the strengths of this novel: the “what if?” factor. What if this happened to you? What if you were invited to participate in a television show with supposed security and safety protocols, but then all the safety nets disappeared and you were really fighting for your life?

As I read this novel, I kept thinking what an anomaly it is. There are a lot of mysteries, thrillers, and fantasies on the market, but very few books that offer adventurous, realistic escapism of this type. It’s a lot of fun to take off for the north woods with these characters and empathize with their efforts to build a shelter, find food, get along, and ultimately fight to stay alive when their TV pseudo survival struggles turn into real ones.

Book Review: A Pilgrimage to Eternity: From Canterbury to Rome in Search of a Faith by Timothy Egan

I decided to read this book not because of its religious content but because I enjoy good travel memoirs. Egan has sound secular credentials: he writes for The New York Times, has won a Pulitzer Prize, and has published several other books on a variety of topics. In A Pilgrimage to Eternity, he decides to take the pilgrim’s trail known as the Via Francigena from Canterbury, England, to Rome, Italy. He stipulates that he will not fly on any leg of the journey; instead, he walks whenever possible, but also drives, takes trains, and crosses the English Channel by boat.

Egan’s background is Catholic; his ostensible purpose for the journey is a renewal of his faith. He explains that he has come to question his faith over the years. A large part of the reason is the abuse his brother and his brother’s friends suffered in the past at the hands of a predatory priest. He is seeking God now because his wife’s sister, still young, is dying a painful death by cancer. At every point along the way, Egan offers desperate prayers for her healing and recovery, all the while doubting whether his entreaties to the divine will do any good.

A major source of his skepticism is the history of the places he visits along the way. Christian persecutions and wars have shaped and guided the history of Europe, and at every important point on the Via Francigena, Egan finds horror stories of murders, tortures, and mutilations of Christians by Christians. Entire populations were wiped out over mere issues of doctrine. Egan does not spare the reader from these grim realities, but instead describes them in detail. He goes over the sordid stories of Catholic clergy preying on children, and in particular delves into what happened to his brother and the others – how a priest came into their parish under the guise of gentleness and assistance, all the while intending to prey upon underage boys. Egan also explores the issue of sexuality in the Catholic Church, delving into topics such as celibacy, extramarital sex, homosexuality, the place of women in the church hierarchy, and the intimate relationship Jesus might have had with Mary Magdalene.

Egan stops at all sorts of churches and other shrines along the way, and at each place he tells the story of the saint who is honored there or the battles, riots, or mass murders that occurred in those locations. The history of Europe is the history of the Catholic Church and its various spinoffs. Even in the modern era, for instance, the Lateran Treaty, which ceded the Vatican to the papacy as a sovereign state, was signed by Mussolini and Pope Pius XI with the understanding that the church would remain silent as Mussolini and Hitler united in aggression and mass genocide.

Egan concludes his travels in an audience with Pope Francis. It is a group audience so he doesn’t have an opportunity to ask the questions he has formulated along the way. He remains ambivalent about his faith. He is sure that the journey has changed him, but he is not sure about the details of the transformation.

The power of this book is in its depiction of church history in the shaping of Europe: the savagery and confusion offset by examples of selflessness and honor. Egan is a fine writer and has done his research well. He wisely tells his story without forcing any personal opinions or conclusions upon his readers. This is a worthwhile and important book, and I recommend it.

Book Review: Inventor of the Future: The Visionary Life of Buckminster Fuller by Alec Nevala-Lee

Reading this book is a natural progression after recently reading Whole Earth: The Many Lives of Stewart Brand by John Markoff. Brand was one of Fuller’s many admirers, so much so that pages three and four of Brand’s The Last Whole Earth Catalog are devoted to quotes and poems by Fuller and plugs for his books. To verify this, I pulled out my own worn frayed copy of the catalog, which I had purchased when I was conducting research for my novel set in the late 1960s The Misadventures of Mama Kitchen. At the beginning of page three Brand writes: “The insights of Buckminster Fuller initiated this catalog.” Shortly after he writes: “Fuller’s lectures have a raga quality of rich nonlinear endless improvisation full of convergent surprises.” Indeed, in the 1960s and 1970s, Fuller was one of the most influential architects, futurists, and lecturers in the world. He was particularly popular with the counterculture, who used his geodesic dome ideas in their construction of housing in high-profile communes, but he was equally in vogue with many world leaders and well-known artists. The book opens with an anecdote about someone bringing Fuller to Apple headquarters unannounced, and when Steve Jobs heard he was there, he dropped whatever he was doing and insisted on leading Fuller around for a private tour, just the two of them.

In this fascinating biography, Nevala-Lee delves into Fuller’s life story, personality, and intellect, and also into people’s reactions to him. Fuller was a constant volcano of ideas, which he spent his life promoting. Many of the ideas were ultimately impractical, but they were so audacious and revolutionary that they changed the world nonetheless, albeit in the hands of others. Although Fuller’s brilliance is brought out obviously in the course of the narrative, the author is also unsparing in exposing Fuller’s faults. For instance, he always insisted on complete control and decision-making authority on any project he was involved with; and not only that, but he had a tendency to appropriate the ideas of others and claim them as his own, insisting that since it was his project, he deserved all the credit. He was also shameless in using his admirers and acolytes as sources of free labor. Since he often couldn’t afford to fund the research and development to bring his ideas to practical fruition, he would use the students from university classes he taught as an alternative to paid assistance. Although he was constantly on the move, teaching, lecturing, and advising around the world, he burned through the money he earned faster than it came in and almost always experienced financial difficulties.

I have to confess that though the book kept my interest throughout, sometimes I found the details hard to follow. There were too many projects, too many people associated with them, too many colleges at which he taught, and too many world tours to keep track of them all. I suppose it is important in a comprehensive biography to be thorough, but the price of this thoroughness is occasional density in the narrative.

Still, it is an important book about an important life. Fuller was regarded as a genius by many of his contemporaries, and he gave us (or popularized) concepts such as the geodesic dome, Dymaxion cars and houses and maps, the World Game approach to the solving of Earth’s problems, the study of systems known as Synergetics, and the concept of Earth as a spaceship through his book Operating Manuel for Spaceship Earth.

Nevala-Lee, who also wrote the important history called Astounding: John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction, does an excellent job telling a complex story about an exceedingly complex man. It is difficult to comprehend the confusing era of the sixties and seventies without understanding Fuller’s place in it. This book helps to put his life in proper perspective.

Book Review: The Martian by Andy Weir

I’ve seen the movie The Martian at least half a dozen times, and every time I find it uplifting, enervating, and inspiring. I’ve even written a blog post (called “Staying Alive: or, The Martian as an Allegory of the Human Condition“) in reaction to the movie; however, I’ve never read the book until now. I might not have sought it out, but I came across it at one of the little free libraries in the neighborhood. Sure glad I did.

The book follows the same basic plot as the film. Astronaut Mark Watney gets left behind on the red planet when his crewmates, thinking he has died in a sandstorm, have to abort their mission and leave. Lo and behold, Watney is not dead, and spends the rest of the book trying to stay alive. Once NASA becomes apprised of his survival, the entire world watches as top scientists do everything they can to rescue him.

Watney’s voice in the book is clever, erudite, and full of dark humor. He not only fights hard to keep from dying, but he keeps his spirits up as well. In fact, the book is so well-composed that entire passages seem to have made it into the screenplay almost intact.

The pattern that Weir follows (which is also evident in his other books Artemis and Project Hail Mary) is that he throws one crisis after another on Watney, who must use science, strength, and his wits to overcome them. Just when you think that Watney has solved it all and it will be smooth sailing, another catastrophe hits. This constant state of emergency is really not that much of an exaggeration. After all, Mars has an airless, freezing, inhospitable environment that is totally unsuited to human habitation.

All this makes for great thrills and adventure. Weir somehow manages to even make the hard science comprehensible and exciting. As I said, the film follows the book fairly closely, but there are a few more crises in the book, which I presume the screenwriter had to cut to keep the film within manageable length. The film also has one little bit that the book does not touch on: the brief scenes at the end in which we find out what happens to the various crew members of the Hermes. I like these scenes; I’m glad they added them.

As for the book, even if you have watched the movie and know how everything will turn out, it is still a great read. It carries you along as if you’re on a surfboard riding a wave or on skis on a downhill slope. It’s a tense, thrilling, satisfying ride, and I highly recommend that you take it.