Sixty-Six (Hardcover)

by Barry Levinson (Author) "Neil lived up the street from me, from the time we used to live in the old neighborhood-with row houses that went on for miles,..." (more)
Key Phrases: audio man, flower mart, colored guy, Doctor Fox, John Haynes, Washington Monument (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Film director Levinson (Diner; Rain Man; etc.) returns to Baltimore in a rambling debut about high school buddies trying to cope with grown-up life. It's 1966, and narrator Bobby has decided to ditch law school for a low-paying job at the local TV station, much to his girlfriend's dismay. Enigmatic Neil has declined a deferment and is heading to Vietnam. Ben, one-time "King of the Teenagers," is marrying girlfriend Janet because he's losing his hair and Janet's father has offered him a job in the Cadillac showroom. Odd-couple pals Turk and Eggy are 1950s holdovers marveling at organic foods and loose hippie chicks. The boys help each other deal with it all by meeting at the diner to retell stories they've all heard before. Though Ben presents these anecdotes as sidesplitting or life changing, most come across as pretty dull stuff: a kid plays a pinball machine and doesn't win; the zany diner guys drive a car in reverse and hit some trash cans; Bobby makes up a TV traffic report and gets away with it. From these stories Bobby draws conclusions that are as pedestrian as the episodes themselves: "when we're young we understand so little about what we are"; "[l]ike tears, laughter often comes when you least expect it"; and "destiny is what we make it." It's clear that Levinson is shooting for elegy and wisdom, but even though the Vietnam War and the civil rights movement are mined for drama and relevance, readers will find mostly tedium and platitudes.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From The New Yorker
"Sixty-six" is a sequel of sorts to the film "Diner," Levinson's hit début as a director, which dealt with a group of male friends sorting out life and love in 1959 Baltimore. Here, as the title indicates, the setting is seven years later, but that's about the only change. The characters from the movie have been replaced by a nearly identical set who also hang out in a diner, spinning lazy webs of conversation about women, jobs, politics, and football. Bobby Shine, the narrator, has quit law school to work at a local TV station while his buddies variously get drafted, sell cars, and fight over girls. The scenes in the diner are gently funny, and Levinson's evident affection for his characters makes you want to like them, too, but in the end "Sixty-six" resembles its callow narrator, coming up short on energy, depth, and purpose.
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Broadway (September 16, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 076791533X
• ISBN-13: 978-0767915335
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.8 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.5 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,150,354 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I loved it!, January 28, 2004

By	M. T. Guzman "squeakychu" (Rockville, MD, USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Just plain wonderful!, September 29, 2003

By	nobizinfla "nobizinfla" (Windermere, Florida USA) - See all my reviews

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.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Soldiers and Hippies, July 6, 2005

By	Vijay B. Kumar (Wilton, Ct USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.