amaah
Berkeley
Things falling apart — 1 year ago
There are peaks and valleys in this collection of essays. The peaks are virtuosic, the keen observation of American culture circa 1960 to 1968. The intense look at the California ethos and at the unreality and dissonance of San Francisco in late spring 1967. The resort to drugs of all sorts, free love, slogans without context, everything is there. She captures a time of dislocation and fracture in the social fabric and California is an apt terrain from which to explore.
The valleys too are poignant and deeply personal pieces and perhaps it is fitting: it would have been intolerable to have book full of ambitious and highly stylized pieces, exposing herself as she does makes the journalistic heights more transcendant.
