Sleeping Where I Fall: A Chronicle [Hardcover]

Peter Coyote (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1998

Sleeping Where I Fall pays honest tribute to the spiritual search of a generation that had become morally estranged from the dominant culture, a generation that transformed the politics--then the heart and soul--of America.. Peter Coyotes compelling memoir traces the anarchic West Coast counterculture of the sixties and seventies through the political street theater of the San Francisco Mime Troupe, the revolutionary economic theories of the Diggers, and the chaotic encampments of the extended Free Family of hippies and activists. Coyote offers blunt, affectionate, and often comic portraits of friends, lovers, and fellow travelers--all hell-bent on redefining what was morally permissible. Sleeping Where I Fall pays honest tribute to the spiritual search of a generation that had become morally estranged from the dominant culture, a generation that transformed the politics--then the heart and soul--of America. In this heartfelt and intelligent memoir, actor Peter Coyote relives his fifteen-year ride through the heart of the counterculture--a journey that took him from the quiet rooms of privilege as the son of an East Coast stockbroker to the riotous life of the political street theater in San Francisco. Chronicling the revolutionary economic theories of the Diggers, and the chaotic encampments of the extended Free Family of hippies and activists, Coyote offers blunt, affectionate, and often comic portraits of friends, lovers, and fellow travelers.All hell-bent on redefining the morally permissible, these were people forging a new image of personal freedom, people whose ideals were tested by the extremities of communal living. Coyote recalls the world of the Haight-Ashbury, of communes named The Red House, Olema, and Black Bear Ranch, and of life on the road with a nomadic clan called the Gypsy Truckers. In prose that is graphic and unsentimental, Coyote also reveals the corrosive side of love that was once called free, the terror evoked by bikers who came on late-night visits looking for drugs, and Coyotes own quest for the next high. Coyotes road through revolution taught him to be a player and a strategist: he began as a radical communard and became chairman of the California Arts Council; he apprenticed in improvisational street theater and became a motion-picture star working with directors from Steven Spielberg and Barry Levinson to Pedro Almodvar and Roman Polanski. This memoir is his attempt to understand the road he forged, and the distance between the extremes in a spectacular life.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

As the generation that launched America's counterculture in the 1960s matures into its gray ponytails and 401(k) plans, one might expect the autobiographies of its celebrities to be tinged with apology for goals unrealized. Indeed, with only a few notable exceptions, such as Peter Fonda's Don't Tell Dad, most celebrity autobiographies from '60s pop culture icons seem rooted in either bitterness or desperation. Fortunately, in Sleeping Where I Fall, Peter Coyote neither apologizes for his wild days nor waxes romantic for them. Nor should he.

This wise and witty, tightly crafted narrative reports on the turbulence of that era with philosophical integrity, wry humor, and unmitigated honesty. Looking back over his days with the San Francisco Mime Troupe, a street theater group that sought to break the conventional boundaries between performer and audience, Coyote rhapsodizes with equal vigor about the company's artistic triumphs and the pulchritude of its actresses. While his developing acting career and romantic misadventures comprise a great deal of the narrative, an even larger part dwells on his life as one of The Diggers, the band of anarchistic counterculturalists who fought against commercial culture's ability to co-opt the superficial elements of youthful rebellion by rejecting the very notions of ownership and extrinsic value. "The Diggers," writes Coyote, "understood that style is infinitely co-optable. What could not be co-opted was doing things for free-without money." And what things they did! Coyote recounts the lives and times of poets, actors, farmers, and philosophers who participated in a profound cultural experiment that tested the very limits of human consciousness and fell--eventually--to the excesses of personal indulgence.

Coyote's evolution from callow thespian to revolutionary communard to seasoned philosopher is fascinating, as much a social and political history as it is a reminiscence. The stories unravel like tender after-dinner tales in prose that captures the rasp and tickle of Coyote's corduroy voice. In the end, Sleeping Where I Fall reveals a man as complex and unpredictable as the totem animal from which he takes his name. --L.A. Smith

From Library Journal

Coyote not only survived the excesses of the Sixties and Seventies but emerged from years of journeying through the counterculture to achieve success as an actor. Considering the numerous casualties among radicals, who, like Coyote, were heroin junkies living on the edge of society, this is a rare feat. In this frank yet sensitive memoir of those years, Coyote contradicts romantic notions of communes by recalling the discord and petty disagreements typical in his own communal living experiences at Olema ranch and Red House. He describes the chaos created by the Diggers, an antiestablishment group of which he is usually considered a founding member and leader, famous for their stores where everything was given away free, and he remembers his stoned life in Haight-Ashbury. Eventually, he surfaced to work with the San Francisco Mime Troupe, for which he received a special Obie Award. Coyote's thoughtful, articulate writing displays a compassionate wisdom that puts this chronicle in a class above the typical actor's autobiography. Highly recommended for relevent subject collections in academic as well as public libraries.?Richard W. Grefrath, Univ. of Nevada Lib., Reno
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 367 pages
• Publisher: Counterpoint; First Edition edition (May 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1887178678
• ISBN-13: 978-1887178679
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.2 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #253,849 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

48 of 50 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful In Spite of It All, December 31, 2002

By 

Donald W. McFarland (San Francisco, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Sleeping Where I Fall (Paperback)

I've read other reviewers taking Peter Coyote to task for writing what they seem to think is just a self-congratulatory puff piece to satisfy his own ego. I disagree. Not once in the book did I ever see him claim that the existence he and his friends lived was the 'only' way or the 'best' way, nor did he try to make himself out to be some kind of faultless angel who never made a mistake. He simply told, in as straightforward and unembellished a way as possible, what happened in his own personal experience, good and bad, and described the process that took him from one stage of existence to another. That kind of honesty takes courage few of us can claim to have in any level of our lives.

And anyone who was as heavily into drugs as he was to have survived at all, not to mention completely turning their life around and becoming successful in their own chosen field, should be congratulated. I've known enough people in my own experience who didn't, and I grieve for them to this day.

I, for one, am very glad he wrote this book. In 1964 I was only twelve years old and have always felt a bit cheated that I was just too young to have been a part of what I felt even then to be a special and perhaps irreplaceable time. Reading "Sleeping Where I Fall" has given me a sense of almost having been there myself which I've never gotten from any other work on the era in quite the same way.

Thank you for writing this memoir, Peter. I do sincerely appreciate it.

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars For Hippies and ex Hippies, October 16, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Sleeping Where I Fall (Paperback)

Peter Coyote's memoir is a must read for anyone who lived through those crazy and wild times of the 60's. His intimate involvement with so many aspects of the counter culture grass roots movement, his command of the English language,and ability to tell a tale makes this a very enjoyable account.

For me, it was also a sentimental journey. I lived on the Olema farm many years after Peter and his clan had left. His description of the place mirrored many of my own memories. I believe that many new readers will find Peter's account brings back fond and crazy memories.

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A RECOLLECTION OF THE FUTURE TRIP, September 4, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Sleeping Where I Fall: A Chronicle (Hardcover)

Several summers ago I began to notice that teenagers were dressing like hippies of the 60's. It made me wonder why the Hippie movement had "failed" and why it was again resurfacing, even if only in costume. Peter Coyote offers some interesting insight.

Today there is a GAP in the Haight; Peter Coyote takes us back to when there was a Free Store there, and discusses its implications. He makes us a part of the experience with his lucid prose and reflective thoughts about a magical time. Mixing his personal experiences with reflective commentary, he presents it warts and all. Besides offering a plethora sixties sex stories for the mass market, Coyote offers some valuable ideas to ponder as well.

There are stories of encounters with the Hopi, who had actually managed to accomplish what the Hippies were trying to do. Stories culled from a diary that still sparkle with the verve of the time. There are stories of how communal life brought comfort and pain, and of how one can more than survive without money or a job, but not without a role to play.

The highlight of the book is an idea Noah Purifoy suggested for problem solving, an artistic approach, an "antipodal shifting between the realms of logic and intuition," the core of the creative process and a problem solving mechanism of the highest order. Coyote shows how it was used during his tenure on the California Arts Council. This idea deserves a book of its own.

The reason Peter Coyote's book is so timely and important is because we are about to reenter that time once again, but this time more as Hopi than as Hippie. The Global Village (WEB) has placed the entire world in communal proximity, and the unresolved problems of the Hippie experience will be the problems of the Internet Generation. It is the problem of the Hopi's prophetic sign that, "Spider woman will have covered the world with her web."

Now that Communism has fallen, can Capitalism be far behind? "Capitalism is dying, boy." Wall Street financier Morris Cohon tells his Hippie son Peter Coyote, "It's dying of its own internal contradictions." He predicts it will take 50 years and not the 5 his son thinks. Morris was probably right, and that is what makes this book significant. The book offers us a look at our first step in the tribal direction. The Hippies didn't "fail," instead, they just saw it first and got started sooner than the rest, just like all artists do.

For the nostalgic, it is a trip back to a bygone time. For the aware, it is a preliminary discussion about the trip of our future civilization. Take your pick, it's your trip to take.