Another Author's review--Thank you Richard--gotta read yours

Ten Years After the Future
Bill Samos
Reviewed by
Richard McClain
4 stars

My own experience of the 60s was shaped by southern California, that laid-back la-la-land where nothing seemed real and “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” was easy to relate to staggering around in the sand of Venice Beach.
If you can keep up with it, you’ll love Stamos’s phantasmagoric hallucinogenic vision of the 60s. It touches all the bases of the times. From the upper reaches of Oakland on the east side of San Francisco Bay, to Berkeley with scholars and drop-outs, to a strangely normal commune in Oregon, to the fearsome hell of Vietnam. Donna and Sally, opposites though sisters, are the tentpoles of the whirling, spinning, dizzying action. Author Stamos lovingly details the cutesy old-fashioned teen world that was torn asunder by the WAR. And he has no mercy on the characters he invents. As it should be.
Problem: it’s difficult to keep the characters straight, and it’s difficult to imagine the backdrops because the book seems like MOLL FLANDERS, never telling us enough of where we are to have a sense of place. BUT...the characters are real people, drawn from life and then caricatured enough to make them bigger than real people ever could be. Like any real picture of the 60s, it drips with blood, drugs, alcohol, stupid games, sex of all kinds and combinations.

Just put a bottle of scotch on the table. Use a small glass and sip it. Read this enormously energetic book and slip into the horrific world of the Vietnam War. How did we survive it?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Image
OK So this blog is initially to help support  my novel, Ten Years After the Future,  coming out on  Rogue Phoenix Press,  hopefully in February '18. Of course, more about that later-- It was dedicated to my loving mother Lula Marshall, seen here at 92, at Ocean Beach in San Francisco.   So first, some thoughts on motherhood-- Reduced to its basics, motherhood is mankind's most sacred mission--transferring human genes through procreation to survive into future generations.  As biological imperative it is regarded as the most noble and selfless act, nurturing, caring for, and sacrificing  on the personal level, so that we all ontologically can flourish and live on.  The act is considered pure sacrifice and love. But can it also be seen as the most special privilege, offering the greatest rewards and satisfaction all on its own?  Saying that raising a child is such a 'sacrifice' and as "the hardest job in the ...
Read more
Image
#TenYearsAfterTheFuture #HistoricalRomance Will Donna find a man who will be devoted and true? Can Sally ever combine her forbidden sexuality with her need to be of service? Can Devon move beyond his self-infatuation to help bring a fractured family together? < You can find it on Amazon at: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B079K7YCMG/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1517697036&sr=8-1&keywords=Ten+Years+After+the+future+stamos EXCERPT: Ten Years After the Future The dance hall was more like a storage warehouse, a cavernous shadowy funhouse. Everything swirled colors before the drugs even kicked in. Meandering through the angelic ghost-like dancers, they quickly found their way to the front of the stage The evangelical alchemy of the Grateful Dead—and Jerry Garcia’s nimbus of black hair, belied his un-rock star stature and glory. She was mesmerized from the beginning by his angelic plaintive voice, all teary toned and wise; with a beat that was both an ea...
Read more
Image
Rustlings of a dream theology?... Where do dreams come from,  where do we go when we dream,  what are the limits of our dreams? This is a question that has mystified the greatest minds and mystics since humans have existed.    Shakespeare said: “ I could be bounded in a nutshell and still be king of infinite space, if were not for these dreams at night” Yes, clearly, most seem to have a direct or indirect continuity with waking life. Much is obviously the working through issues from waking life: insecurities, shames, worries, guilts, desires, plans, and neuroses.    But what of those creative, wild, visual ones that are so full of unknown people, places, situations and even dimensions that seem to come out of nowhere and relate to nothing experiential??   What about that mystical feeling that they indeed must come from somewhere else?…. This is a theme that I have informally catalogued most of my life.   Many people...
Read more