Customer Reviews

California Generation

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

It's the swinging sixties and the California Generation is out in full force! I first found this book at an used book store in the summer of '80. I was 17 years old and devoured this book! I found it in paperback soon after and read it every couple of years. I was only a little kid in the 60s but reading this book makes me feel like I was right there with Clay, Marshall, Stryker, York, Odessa, R.G., Dorot and all the rest. There are two different endings - one ended in 1968 and the updated version is from 1980, I believe. It would be great if Briskin brings the California Generation back for the millennium!

A VERY NORMAL STORY OF THE LIVES OF TEEN-AGERS IN THE FLOWER POWER - LOVE GENERATION. HAVING BEEN THERE MYSELF, IT BRINGS BACK MEMORIES. THERE ARE TWO VERSIONS OF THIS BOOK. BOTH ARE VERY GOOD.

I read this book in 1971 when I was 19 years old and
I still remember it fondly. You come to really
care about the characters. I think there's at least
one character in this book tht we all can identify
with

Growing up in So Cal during the late sixties early seventies, I have never seen another book capture the period so perfectly as this one does. If you missed that period this book shows you what it was like. If you came of age at that time, this book makes you feel like you are living it again. All the divergent groups of people each taking different paths are realistically portrayed. They all come together to make for an unforgetable ending.

It's the swinging sixties and the California Generation is out in full force! I first found this book at an used book store in the summer of '80. I was 17 years old and devoured this book! I found it in paperback soon after and read it every couple of years. I was only a little kid in the 60s but reading this book makes me feel like I was right there with Clay, Marshall, Stryker, York, Odessa, R.G., Dorot and all the rest. There are two different endings - one ended in 1968 and the updated version is from 1980, I believe. It would be great if Briskin brings the California Generation back for the millennium!

Like the Southern boy who falls for a black woman. Like the prom queen who's involved with a Nisei boy and her parents are trying to put up a pose of "enlightenment", but still...Like the Nordic jock who's such a beach hunk that it takes conscious effort on his part to be a person. Like the school nerd who hides gay tendencies (kind of betraying two of your own prejudices in one shot, aren't you, Jackie?). I think of my own membership in this "generation" and I squirm over how pretentious so many of us were back then. The "political correctness" crowd of today are nothing but those of us who haven't come to terms with the way human nature really is. This book may be a sort of "alternative American Graffitti", but a TV spinoff could never be called "Happy Days". I'm not surprised that it's out of print--to say that the concept is dated nowadays is to put it mildly!