Customer Reviews

Ringolevio: A Life Played for Keeps (Citadel Underground)

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Ringoloevio is a game played by NYC street kids which lies somewhere between 'tag' and a gang fight.

This purportedly self auto-biographical book centers around Kenny Wisdom as he matures from street-wise punk to heroin addict to cat burglar; then follows him to Europe and back to the US, and onto his misadventures in the army and his relocation to the Haight in the early sixties, where he helps create the Diggers, a legendary (and well documented) group of people that sponsored free food and free concerts in Golden Gate Park where such luminaries and legends as the Grateful Dead and Janis Joplin performed. Incisively written and indelible on one's memory once read, it stands as one either of the great first hand social histories of the sixties, or as one of the most imaginative fictions ever concieved.

When the book was first published in 1972, Peter Coyote's name was not listed as one of the authors.

From the inside jacket (1972 edition):
"He's America's most famous invisible man who, determined on keeping his identity anonymous, has fed deceptions to the press and let others use his name to the point where some people think he doesn't even exist ("Whenever a Digger identifies himself as 'Emmett Grogan'", the San Francisco Chronicle reported, "it means nothing, since all Diggers call themselves Emmett Grogan . . .")"

While it is true, this is a wonderful, true-to-life autobiography of one of the central figures to the Haight-Ashbury scene, there is something fundamentally tragic about Grogan, especially if you read Peter Coyote's introduction and realize what happened to Grogan in the 1970s. Grogan was no bohemian intellectual, and so the reading is rough at times, but Grogan was a man who had an amazing amount of gaul, a joie-de-vivre, and a sense of daring that made his life fascinating... "a life played for keeps" as his subtitle tells us.

Unfortunately, at too early an age, that sense of daring led him to heroin. Perhaps because Grogan opens himself up so completely in "Ringolevio", one comes away from the book with a sense that somehow, despite Grogan's disappointment with the failure of the Haight-Ashbury adventure, he was going to be all right, he was going to find a new way to do his good work in this world. The book ends with a first-hand account of the Rolling Stones Altamont Speedway murder. Grogan was writing with hindsight, recognizing that the concert marked the end of the illusion: many residents of Haight Ashbury began to move away, or get into trouble, and it didn't take long before the whole gig was over. But Grogan seemed optimistic that he would find other gigs, equally as enriching as his years as a Digger in San Fransisco.

The first time I read this book it was a first edition copy, and I didn't have the benefit of knowing what happened to Grogan in the years following this book's publication. Reading Coyote's recollections of Grogan in the years after the book's publication - how financial success led Grogan back to the needle, and how the needle eventually claimed Grogan's life - makes the feigned optimism of Ringolevio's end all the more bittersweet.

I don't give it five stars because it reads at times like the work of a hack. Nonetheless, this is a fascinating document for anyone interested in the history of the Haight-AShbury community of the late 1960s, who the figures involved in the community were and what events shaped that community. And for the most part it seems honest, warts and all, not some nostalgia-tinged feel-good book about peace and love.

This is a unique view of the San Francisco/Haight-Ashbury hippie sub-culture. A third person autobiography that tells the story of a New York tough who journeys from the mean streets of Brooklyn to the acid-driven hills of San Francisco's summer of love. Absolutely indispensable to anyone looking to grasp a true sense of the forces driving the youth of this country in the turbulent 60's. And beyond this, a thoroughly enjoyable story, as much action-adventure as political statement. The only question left at the end of the book is whether "Emmett Grogan" really exists, or is he an amalgam of the children who forged the cultural revolution that affected all of us, regardless of which "side" we were on.

Each time I read this book, I'm more amazed and amused by it. There is never a dull moment, and I still can't figure out when or whether it crosses the line from fantasy into reality. It has a voice as authentic and American as "Huckleberry Finn" and Woody Guthrie's autobiography, and it stands as tall as they do in American literature, no joke. One of my favorites of all time. It captures a place and time, and delivers an unforgettable character, as charming as he is unreliable. I hope it will be rediscovered and recognized someday.

Cover to cover, only a couple words don't ring true. His hunting account mixes up antelopes and deer, describing a stag in a romantic setting as a pronghorn. And something about his Digger truck delivering free food in the San Francisco slums and districts, the truck changes characteristics from one page to the next. But I would not quibble about 500 pages of laid down Word by a genius tongue smith rapper and social visionary who scorned rhetoric and publicity over anonymous action--can you dig the discipline that would put on a writer? And he never lets up, as episodes flow into each other with great skill and interest.

Fiction or fact?--It does not matter when labels are stripped away and truth is revealed. A man who felt the weight of having "...killed a man back there," before he started his Digger run finally walks away from California in the last sentence of the book, hooking the reader with a sting of implied motivation for his altruism.

An American classic, real life-actor ancestor of critique writers of civilization, and still with plenty of meat for discussion in literature classes.

Although Emmett wasn't actually "unknown" I entitled this review as such because most people never even heard of him. I believe he kept more to himself and his people than a jumper into the limelight like so many of that time. I met Emmett down the lower east side of NY in 67 along with the Diggers when they first arrived in NY. Some of the Diggers and myself included ended up on The Allen BurkeTV Show if you remember that. We all showed up but Emmett...instead his replacement was Emma Grogan who I believe was fictional and not his wife but of this I'm still not sure even though I was there. They too (The Diggers) were all Merry Pranksters as well if you ask me. I was a runaway at 16 at the time and this was all new to me but I do have to say he was one character that stuck in my mind for many years before I finally looked into whatever became of him. A heart attack on the NYC subway I believe.
When I looked him up I came across Ringolevio and instantly was captivated by the book. A fantastic read and completely believable, at least to me it was. Maybe not, had I never met him. There are few that enter into a life as jamb packed with adventure as Emmett did and what I love most about him was that he created his own world with wild and well tuned visions brought to life.
I highly recommend this book!

Anybody who wants to know anything about the San Fran "hippie" scene of the late 60's has to beg, borrow or steal "Ringolevio." Even if some of it is ***, it's the read of a lifetime. Far better than fiction

Grogan is a born storyteller, sorta like your old uncle who tells you in detail how he killed scores of Germans at the Battle of the Bulge. "But Uncle Bert-- you were 12 years old in 1944!" "Yeah, but I enlisted early..." Grogan is like that-- he tells a great story, and it's up to you to figure out which parts are true, and how much he's exaggerated: 20%, 50%, or 193%. Why this is worth reading: if you wish to know about the sixties and the counterculture in NY and LA and SF, and if you want a (mostly unreliable but entertaining) eyewitness, this will inform and intrigue. Someday, this will be made into a film-- if they can make a movie of Chuck Barris' "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind," they can film this hodgepodge of fiction and fact as well.

I FIRST READ THIS BOOK IN THE EARLY 70'S AND WAS COMPLETELY MESMERIZED BY THIS CHARACTER, EMETT GROGAN. WHAT A RIDE HE HAD!
I ALWAYS WONDERED IF HE WAS FOR REAL OR NOT. PETER COYOTE, TELL ME PLEASE WAS THERE REALLY A PERSON NAMED EMETT GROGAN OR NOT?
LISTEN UP PRODUCERS,A FABULOUS MOVIE THIS BOOK WOULD MAKE.A GREAT READ FOR ANYONE WITH A SINCERE INTEREST IN THE 60'S.

This is the most important book to come out of the '60's and there is certainly nothing "hack"-ish about it. The only book it can be compared to in recent history is "The Basketball Diaries". Read both books, understand that both guys made some stuff up, and then look at the results.

Emmett is not dead yet, imo. But Jim Carroll is.

Odd.