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?
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