‘Nothing Left to Lose: Or, How Not to Start a Commune’ Book Review
Sneha Jaiswal (Twitter | Instagram)
“The fact was that I was confused. But you know, it was the sixties. I rejected my parents’ materialistic values. I wanted to live a more meaningful life. Yet I wasn’t sure what that meant or if I meant what I was saying.”
Looks like it doesn’t matter if you’re living in the 1960s or 2020s, an existential crisis awaits anybody who starts wondering what a ‘meaningful life’ is. ‘Nothing Left to Lose: Or, How Not to Start a Commune’ is a memoir by Jeff Richards, where the author recalls trying to evade the Vietnam War Draft so that he can start a commune with his best-friend Rick Sager in the Rocky Mountains. But when that doesn’t work out, the friends go on a crazy cross-country trip with an inflatable rubber raft, which includes a lot of hitch-hiking and river rafting.
As Jeff stumbles through sex, psychedelics, and spiritual detours, readers get to view drugs, love, and the idealism of 1960s America through his eyes. Chapter one entertainingly describes the transformative moment when Jeff and Rick get high for the first time as University students, while sharing an apartment. From there, they soon leave college behind for a life filled with drugs, music, questionable romantic encounters, and anti–Vietnam War protests. The next few chapters focus on the duo’s attempt to start a commune, but most of their friends bail, leaving them with a rundown place in Denver that they share with a third roommate and the occasional homeless hippie.
Author Jeff’s writing is conversational and easy to read, vividly capturing what it felt like to be young, reckless, and clueless in the 1960s. While the spiritual detours in the middle of the memoir tend to drag, it’s the easy, dependable friendship between Jeff and Rick – and Rick’s colorful adventures with women – that are the book’s highlights. Though Jeff crosses paths with many women, his heart remains set on Rick’s younger sister, Pie, for most part of the novel. That, of course, doesn’t stop him from trying to hook up with every woman he meets along the way. But most women aren’t interested, and the few who are either want his body or his records to steal.
The events in Nothing Left to Lose: Or, How Not to Start a Commune follow a neat timeline, but the title sets you up for communal chaos that never really comes. Jeff and Rick may be happy to share their space, but the full-blown, free-spirited madness the title hints at stays mostly off the page. Or, to be fair, author Jeff does offer a generous slice of ‘hippie life’ in his memoir, but it’s their hitch-hiking trip that holds most of the interesting action, not their attempt to run a successful commune in the mountains. The friends are broke, own almost nothing, and embark on a crazy trip that makes poor Jeff’s mother fear that she might not see her son again.
The first and last few chapters of the memoir are the most fun to read, while the middle section feels slow, scattered, and less engaging. The final pages follow Jeff and Rick, who are joined by Pie on the last leg of their hitchhiking trip, as they head back home. There’s plenty of drama on the road, with the trio encountering difficult strangers and unexpected challenges. They’re almost home, and quite honestly, the memoir is at its most entertaining just as the story simply ends. In a way, the ending makes sense, you know they’ll be fine, but somehow, watching Jeff and Rick crash on a couch and get high one last time might’ve felt more satisfying.
For readers curious about the free-spirited lives of young hippies and rebels in 1960s America, this memoir offers an intriguing, if uneven, glimpse into that era. While it doesn’t always hit the mark, it captures the restless energy, wild choices, and fleeting (and lasting) friendships that defined a generation.
Rating: 3 on 5 stars.
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