Customer Reviews

Sixty-Six

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

 

 

Maybe it's the Baltimore nostalgia, or maybe it's the message that there's something awaiting everyone beyond what we see when we're young, but I really got into this story. Bobby Shine and his male "diner" buddies bring back the ambivilance we felt between our friends the soldiers and our friends the hippies during the Vietnam War years. The novel awakens long lost memories of such things as coddies, peppermint sticks in lemons, the Flower Mart, Read's drug stores, dates at Mandel's, hanging out in a diner. Having close buddies and a welcoming place such as the diner to discuss personal problems and accomplishments is basic to this story. Friendship reigns supreme. Nothing quite matches the freedom and exhuberance of being young. Even with its painful times. This story captures it all. Read it.

Barry Levinson's "Sixty-Six" is a marvelous paean to friendship, male bonding and Baltimore---perhaps "Son of Diner."

At least somewhat autobiographical, narrator Bobby Shine guides the reader thru the lives of a group that hangs at the Hilltop Diner. In their early twenties, they cling to their past as they move into adulthood and responsibility.

Against a background of change, the crew segues from the fifties rituals to the uncertainty of the sixties. The cultural landscape is shifting and the friends are caught up in the unexpected changes.

The story is replete with wonderful digressions to past events that forged their camaraderie. It is told in a relaxed conversational style with magnificent dialogue full of wit, irony, sarcasm and humor. You feel like you are sitting in the diner with them.

Filled with elation and melancholy, laughter and tears, opportunities lost and found, "Sixty-Six" is both funny and sad---and always poignant.

It is a great 60's book as the name implies. Typical run of the mill story of young men and women coming of age during the Vietnam debacle, caught up in their own life's whirl-wind. It is a story of friendship, innocence lost, romance, ambition and lack of it. The most intriguing character, Neil, an iconoclast, goes his own way by enlisting in the army whereas his friends get out of it by producing doctor's letter. But soon he returns to his town wearing a soldier's uniform, AWOL. He never acknowledges why he wanted to enlist or why he came back, a deserter. He is an enigma, an aloof character, a thorn in his friend's side, a train wreck bound to happen.

There is an eerie parallel to the current Iraq war and the one which blazed for a decade in South East Asia almost 40 years ago. Politicians start wars on vague notions, send young men/women to fight and then sit back and rationalize. Ben, who is always popping pills, wonders out loud "Why are we concerned about Communism spreading in South East Asia now when we didn't do anything to prevent Eastern Europe fall in Communist hands after WWII." Ben's comment can easily apply to any decade; just replace the word communism with dictatorship.

More than anything it is a book of friendship, camaraderie among men, the kinship which is hard to describe.

It must be an autobiography.

This is a novel about a group of young men during events that happened to them around 1966. It is told through the eyes of Bobby Shine, and we hear other tidbits from his life as well, but they all have a tie in to events that occur during the timeframe of the book. We assume the author is looking back at his life from a distance of about 40 years, because he has the gaps of memory, of which incidents are important, etc. We see how the sexual revolution, drugs, and the war all affect the men, and women that we meet.

I love the work of Barry Levinson on screen. On paper though is another story. THe characters in this book are one dimensional. They have no soul. And I never got their voice. THough what each character does is unique, they all sound like the same person. I never got to know anyone. Their is simply not enough dialogue in this book-we are told but never shown anything. I wanted to hear each character speak more, not the second hand version that is presented. I know Mr. Levinson can do dialogue- it is the most brilliant thing about his movies. I can't imagine why he didn't incorporate it here.

Wow! Am I surprised at the negative reviews! I am a 62 year old grandmother who was "at her best" in the Sixties.
I found this book through a "book swap" and boy did I luck in when I took this one. I grew up in Binghamton and Johnson City, New York (not to be confused with growing up in "the big city" New York. We are "small town" folks, and my life fit right in with Sixty-Six. As for myself, I am drumming up copies for Christmas presents for family and friends of "our era". Laugh? OMG. Feel the anxiety with regard to marriage? HA! Got married in 1965 - only I was the bride. Viet Nam - DRAFT? I remember...Oh, do I remember. So many got married before a certain date to avoid the draft. What a trade off. I wonder. At any rate, do not pay attention to any negative reviews, please, for you will be depriving yourself of an excellent...absolutely memory shaking, rocking read.

When he talked a bout the PaperMate grey and pick retractable pen, he got me! So much is familiar. Born and bred in NYC, all of this is migratable. I sat by the pool and had it read to me and well, I just laughed and giggled. With the world in its way, the Republican convention underway ... terror threats on NYC bridges and public transportation ... it's remarkable to say this novel was "fantasy". But, there you have it in today's world. When my teenaged son gets his head out of online poker and IMing, I will encourage him to read through this coming of age story ... it is so wonderfully innocent!

Diner was a good movie. Avalon was a great movie. Tin Men was a very funny movie. Liberty Heights was a bit repetitive after Diner and Avalon, but good.

Sixty-six is purely retread of already covered ground. We know Levinon grew up in Baltimore and we know he feels a very strong connection with it. But Levinson waxes so nostalgic about the power of Baltimore and the diner, that it bleeds into overkill.

If you've never seen his movies, this book may appeal to you. But for those of you picking up this book because of his movies, he already put most of this book into his movies and this attempt at pulling a Forrest Gump here and having the turbulence of the 60s unfold around these diner folk seems added on.

Character development here is in the form of dialogue and repetition of phrases here is grating.

Mr. Levinson, we understand, you enjoyed your time growing up in Baltimore. Great, we're happy for you. Got anything else?

When I discovered this book in the library I was very excited. After all, I love Levinson movies, and Baltimore was my second home. I visited my father in Baltimore from my mother's home in NYC once a month for about 18 years. Of course, I came of age about half-a-generation after these characters.

Unfortunately, the book reads not like a novel, but like a memoir. As Neil quotes Twain in the book (and I paraphrase) "the difference between truth and fiction is that fiction has to be logical". Well this fiction is too logical, too crafted, too contrived. I guess I don't believe that, in a true novel, these characters would have all these unspectacular and predictable misadventures.

Some of this reaction stems, I'm sure from knowing Levinson's background and having seen his movies.

I look for spontanaiety in a book. This book has no surprises.

I give it 2 stars for the Baltimore nostalgia, but overall it is a disappointing read.