Can't Find My Way Home: America in the Great Stoned Age, 1945-2000 [Paperback]

Martin Torgoff (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 3, 2005

From the narcotic allure of the bebop and Beat generations to the psychedelic 1960s, Vietnam, the cocaine-fueled disco era, the crack epidemic, and the ecstasy-induced rave culture, illegal drugs have profoundly shaped America's cultural landscape. In Can't Find My Way Home, journalist and filmmaker Martin Torgoff chronicles what a long strange trip it's been as the American Century became the Great Stoned Age.

Weaving together first-person accounts and historical background, Can't Find My Way Home is a narrative vast in scope yet rich in intimate detail. Torgoff tells the stories of those whose lives became synonymous with the drug culture, from Charlie Parker, Allen Ginsberg, Timothy Leary, and John Belushi to ordinary people who felt their consciousness "expanded" or who plumbed the depths of addiction. He also examines the broader impact of drugs on society and politics, from the war on drugs to the recovery movement, and the continuing debate over drug policy. A vivid work of cultural history that neither demonizes nor romanticizes its subject, Can't Find My Way Home is a provocative and fascinating look at how drugs have entered the American mainstream.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Martin Torgoff came of age just about the same time as the drug boom, a circumstance that informs his overview of America's "Great Stoned Age." Chronicling the irrepressible onslaught of mind-altering substances from the end of World War II through the close of the century, Torgoff (whose previous publishing efforts have centered around rockers Elvis Presley and John Cougar Mellencamp) intersperses the personal with the historical. Laying the groundwork with his own recollections of indulgence beginning in the late 1960s, the author flashes back to the Beat era, which he asserts opened the door for all that followed. Interviews with the obscure and celebrated add color and detail to the chronicle. Here's Herbert Huncke, the unapologetic hustler and heroin addict who lurked on the periphery of '50s bohemian scene and turned up as a character in William Burroughs' pulp memoir Junkie. Into the 1960s, there's acid guru Timothy Leary, poet Allan Ginsburg, record producer Paul Rothchild, Woodstock MC Wavy Gravy, and others caught up in a wave of revolutionary experimentation and excess. The '70s leads to the cocaine craze (embodied here by party girl Suzie Ryan), which begets drug wars (with plenty of casualties on both sides), Just Say No, the crack epidemic, and rave culture. While Torgoff's tome is too capricious to serve as the final word on America's drug obsession, it's eminently readable and entertaining, thanks to its expansive, pop-culture-informed tone. There's an almost insane momentum to this tale, with dozens of astonishing twists and turns. Imagine Jimmy Carter's drug czar, Dr. Peter Bourne, snorting cocaine at a party thrown the by pot legalization group NORML. Then picture George H.W. Bush's point man on drugs, William Bennett, remarking in an interview that it would be "morally plausible" to behead drug dealers. So much for moderation. --Steven Stolder --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Torgoff challenges what he calls America's "cultural amnesia" about recreational drug use during the last half-century, staking out a rhetorical middle ground that acknowledges both the pervasive cultural influence and the costs of overindulgence. The problem with his panoramic account is its focus on celebrities, especially among the creative classes, whose stories have already been told. That makes for a series of often stunning imagesâ€"Charlie Parker in the grip of heroin addiction, Wavy Gravy confronting Charles Manson, John Belushi snorting cocaine on live TVâ€"especially given Torgoff's skills as an interviewer (and the good fortune of getting to talk with key figures like Herbert Huncke and Timothy Leary before their deaths), but at the expense of discovering what happened once various drugs made their way to ordinary folks in the suburbs. Torgoff (who won an ASCAP Deems Taylor Award for American Fool, about John Cougar Mellencamp) does touch on that by opening with his own early drug use on '60s Long Island and closing with a poignant encounter with an aged homeless junkie, and the book could have used more stories like that. The discussion of the government's "war on drugs" is somewhat scattershot; though detailed on President Carter's flirtation with relaxing the laws and the militancy of the "Just Say No" era, there's nothing about Nixon's policiesâ€"a particularly stunning omission since the DEA was created during his administration. Torgoff creates compelling juxtapositions, and he's not afraid to ask difficult questions, but he hasn't truly broken new ground.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 560 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster; Later Printing edition (May 3, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743230116
• ISBN-13: 978-0743230117
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #604,531 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

34 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars GREAT BOOK FOR UNIVERSITY COURSES!!!, May 25, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Can't Find My Way Home: America in the Great Stoned Age, 1945-2000 (Hardcover)

I'm reading this book a bit at a time. Each part is like a little history lesson - full of specific people, places and things that I've heard a lot of stories about - usually from folks who didn't have a great deal of clarity when they were either living through them OR speaking about them.

Torgoff has that clarity and there's humor in his prose that gives it a certain kind of bop. Yes, it's a long book. Most people who write long books these days write them as if they are "afraid of going to hell" for having done so - there's no ease, things get really claustrophobic in such books. Torgoff sails through this material not so much like a man who's afraid of going to hell...but as a man who's been there.

There's a kind of ease, a kind of compassion and a sense of spaciousness to Torgoff's style in this work. The length of the book doesn't seem that long. Maybe it would SEEM LONGER if Torgoff attempted to adapt his style to the demands of the market...some kind of a weekly reader version of the lifes, legends, loves (and drugs) of the times he's telling us about. Thank GOD he didn't cave into that.

Can't Find My Way Home makes me want to listen to a hell of a lot of music, see some movies again and read more books about the myriad folks who inhabit this book.

I see this book as a definite college text for classes focusing on the the history of jazz, rock and roll, film and literature in the last sixty years of American culture.

The fact that Torgoff weaves his own story into this piece communicates to me that he's not of those people who goes around chanting phrases like "If you remember the 60's you weren't there". Torgoff indicates to the reader that he was "there" and that he managed to extricate himself from the oblivion of those times through either the grace of God, or his own luck, karma or whatever.

Thus, Torgoff's writing in this book is infused with a kind of all pervasive sharpness, like the razor edge of a hatchet, that only comes from the words of those who have lived...and survived. I have a sense that Torgoff has been swinging this blade for some time...I suspect he's cut through a great deal of his own personal reference points in order to find the patience and perseverance to not only deliver this work...but to have the humility to title the work as he has.

Bravo!!

22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Bible for our generation, May 25, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Can't Find My Way Home: America in the Great Stoned Age, 1945-2000 (Hardcover)

This is a fantastic book--the history of our time, the author's insights and synthesis. It's wildly affecting and entertaining, and it's bigger than what it seems to be about. Torgoff has a touch of Balzac in him, that's for sure. He gets the joke, but he also captures the loss and pathos. I especially liked his own story--he wove it into the narrative in a really detached way that made it all the more affecting. I stayed up all night reading.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Can't Find My Way Home: America in the Great Stoned Age, 1945-2000, November 11, 2006

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Antonio Loret de Mola - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Can't Find My Way Home: America in the Great Stoned Age, 1945-2000 (Paperback)

An excellent and very detailed history of drugs and its impact on our society. The book is thoroughly researched. It's entertaining and very readable. It's not only a review of the history of drugs in American society but also covers a number of individuals and the effect narcotics had on them. I found it fascinating and scary. Having lived through those turbulent times it brought back many memories.
Pictures and a summary of the cast of characters would have enhanced the book. All in all a good read.