Disobedience (California Fiction) (Paperback)

~ (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Drinkard's southern California is a semi-futuristic, Pynchonesque world where steaks are sprayed with carcinogen-blockers and people meet through video party lines. His cartoonish, postmodern multigenerational saga flips back and forth through time, from 1885, when Eliza Tibbets plants California's first navel oranges as a symbol of the fertility she so desperately wants, to the near future of her great-granddaughter's family. Mavy Tibbets, a spaced-out coven member and daughter of a notorious hard-core novelist, protects a family secret that will later feature in her disappearance or murder. Her husband, corporate climber Franklin Wells, seeks relief from the info-tech age through surfing, sex, nature and Girl Scout cookies. Meanwhile, their teenage son Aaron is suspected by the police of torching his high school. California seems like a rootless time-warp where America constantly reinvents itself. Drinkard ( Green Bananas ) delivers a lyrical, devastatingly witty commentary on alientation in our increasingly irrational, violent world, but his hermetic fantasy soon palls.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

The story of an orange grove forms the backbone of this comic epic. Progressive Californian Eliza Tibbets plants the orange grove in the 1880s. One hundred years later, the schemes of her great-granddaughter's corporate cyber-goof husband threaten to kill off the trees. The novel remote controls among three different periods of time and in the process serves up enormously funny set pieces. Viewing his characters' high-resolution lives under the microscope of his imagination, the author ( Green Bananas , Knopf, 1989) is masterful, delighting in what language and the novel can do, scene after scene. This tale ranks with the great wise-guy novels of Pynchon, DeLillo, and Berger, and, in fact, it seems somewhat more informed by human contact than those others. Recommended for all libraries.
- Brian Geary, West Seneca, N.Y.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 349 pages
• Publisher: University of California Press (October 6, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0520206835
• ISBN-13: 978-0520206830
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #2,887,715 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An imaginative first novel with a strong sense of history., September 6, 1998

By	Jason MacCannell ([e-mail]) (Oakland, California) - See all my reviews

From the Bear Flag Revolt to the mini-mall present, the military and industrial powers of white California have consistently attempted to define the state's future by redefining (or obliterating) its past. This is certainly not a unique characteristic of the powers-that-be, but in California, especially Southern California, they seem intent on rubbing it in our faces. Thus it is not surprising that young California writers are increasingly turning to the state's past, at a level beyond supermarket historical realism or postmodern surface-nostalgia, to attempt to come to grips with this region's unsettled and unsettling present. Drinkard succeeds in crossing the seemingly impenetrable haze that separates one generation's California from the next. Jumping from parent to child, womb to grave, the novel encompasses the boosterism, booms and busts of the McKinley era, the corporate greed of the nineteen-eighties, and a near-future setting so plausible that it barely qualifies as science fiction. The author shows how the emotional lives and destinies of the characters in each present are created in a history that is largely unknown to them, revealed only when disasters both man-made and natural literally turn up the bones of the past. The book is an enjoyable read, especially in the near-future setting, whose characters are the most lovingly detailed. Drinkard has not quite learned to write the distant past, though his treatment shows promise. The nineteenth-century portion is lovingly researched, but the speech and mannerisms of the characters did not ring true enough to immerse me in the setting. The near-future part is full of gizmos and knick-knacks (some would say "gimmicks") that resonate with both DeLillo at his more whimsical (White Noise) and Jonathan Lethem. I am not personally fond of the former writer, but anyone who is--you must be out there--will certainly enjoy this aspect of Drinkard's book. By far my favorite part of the book was set in the corporate high-rise culture of the nineteen-eighties, amidst the early growth of the "information superhighway" and the cocaine-fueled careers of its builders. In this part of the story Drinkard portrays the emotional and moral development of a young man in a way that any writer could be proud of; and he certainly surpasses most of the other writers dealing with the same subject matter. More importantly, it is the part of the book that gave me the greatest sense of time past, of history both made and in the making.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars calif prose quanta, March 12, 1999

By A Customer

This book is a throbbing fun chant, a glockenspiel, an information tsunami, a benevolent dose, a purple eye pouch, a navel orange, a sexy sprawl, a fanatical consumer, a big fat violent happy face. I laughed, I cried, I got wet.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The best book on California counterculture available, August 28, 1996

By A Customer

This review is from: Disobedience: A Novel (Hardcover)

Michael Drinkard is not only the most original and literate chrnonicler of the Southern Californian landscape writing today, but also an insightful, poetic, and innovative traveler of the territory of childhood, of work, and of the psyche.