The Psychedelic Slacker
Felix Skidwell And The Pothead's Stone
by
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A Restless Wriggle In Time
Graduating high school in June 1973 meant being a little too early for slacker but not necessarily too late for the Vietnam War – too late to have suffered through the unrest and fervor of the Sixties but not too late to idealize them, to be caught up in their legacy.
Like any other kid born in 1955, the landscape of my national political subconscious was occupied by those mammoth, unpeaceful things seen on the family television: the JFK assassination, the Civil Rights movement, the MLK and RFK assassinations of 1968, the first landing on the moon, Vietnam, the ongoing dissent to it... the humiliating pullout (standing room only helicopters off the roof of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon in late April 1975).
Tardy Baby Boomers Wound Up With Nowhere To Go
Fine for famed photographer Robert Altman. But what happened to us, a few true-blooded bred-in-the-bone Bohemians born just a definite tad too late for the Sixties, artist-dreamers, gifted discontents imbued with the value of idleness, mavericks unwilling or unable to make the leap from the 'idealism of the Seventies' to the 'materialism of the Eighties'?
We were persuaded we were inherently at odds with society and living “in the chaotic whirlwind of the Sixties counterculture.” Regardless of our utopian desires, times had changed and we were actually graduating into its aftermath. We had no sense or taste for progress or destiny. Instead we shared a musical gypsy spirit and sense of pilgrimage derived from Grateful Dead culture, a natty dread of the suburbs that spawned us and some vague knowledge of The Beat Generation (mostly gained via Kerouac's On The Road).
Herein lies the rave rant confession of one such psychedelic slacker, a contemporary, secular and loose Pilgrim's Progress in reverse. Cyberpunk gone retro – come back down to earth to roost at the end of a roach clip...
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About the Book
A book about someone who grew up a little too late for the Sixties but then couldn't get over them...
The restless rueful protagonist and narrator, Felix Skidwell, wants to, and does, escape from Minnesota, the 1970s and his conservative roots.
The result is poignant, but fitful, episodical tale that stretches from the virtual eve of an Upper Midwest high school graduation and a mind-blowing Des Moines Iowa Open Air Grateful Dead concert through programming artsy game software for, and a brief association with, Sixties guru Timothy O’Berry in Southern California.
A year or so into his new life in California, Felix takes a few moments to reflect back while socializing at a posh Orange County barbeque. Check out ZZDave Menacing BBQ, prose set to music by no less than his high school buddy from the Midwest, Lonesome Dave Wasted.
A continually entertaining, often uproarious, coming-of-age story filled with hope and longing, “Go west, young man," it is neither the malaise of being frozen permanently into the tundra or that of sinking helplessly into the creosote pit. One reader found it to be “a modern day A Confederacy of Dunces to be sure”.
About the Author
Alan Mark Train is the author of Strawberry Fairchild And The Green Flame, an illustrated color fable for adults, as well as The Psychedelic Slacker coming-of-age novel. A murder mystery from the perspective of a technical support engineer is in progress.
His prose, fiction and poetry have appeared in literary magazines (The Underground Rag Mag, Slick Press) and in the Santa Cruz Good Times entertainment weekly where he was one of the winners of a short story contest. His writings appear online on Associated Content, iBuzzle.com and Constant Content.
Train has an English B.A. from the University of Minnesota and was an ace feature writer on his high school newspaper many eons ago in the Upper Midwest, where he, like Felix Skidwell, the protagonist of The Psychedelic Slacker, "grew up just a little too late for the Sixties and then couldn't get over them."
His daytime career as a software-oriented technical writer leverages experience gained during some years spent as a mediocre computer programmer.
Interests
Reading, studying and memorizing literature running the gamut from Chaucer and Shakespeare to James Bond, James Joyce and Thomas Pynchon is second nature.
Habitat
The author lives in Santa Cruz by the ocean with the marine layer, the fog, the seabirds, the seals and the nearby redwoods.
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