The novel\u2019s protagonist is named Sergio (a moniker given to him by his Mexican American father); he\u2019s known as Serge. When still a child in 1968, he and his older sister, Angela, are brought by their mother to Central California in search of \u201cthe Big Sur experience\u201d (Big Sur being a place where, supposedly, \u201cpeople can be anything they want to be\u201d). Young Serge\u2019s imagination is filled with the possibilities of the rivers, canyons, beaches, redwoods, and mountains: \u201cI could run wild wherever I pleased,\u201d he thinks. But eight years later, in 1976, these fantasies have soured, dashed by his seemingly inescapable daily reality of poverty and abandonment. His mother has given herself over to an Indian religious cult called Elemental Consciousness, \u201cone of the many Asian cults that had come to America to cash in on the counterculture\u2019s infatuation with exotic alternatives to western-style religion,\u201d leaving Serge unsupervised and unmoored, working low-paying jobs and feeling trapped. He takes solace not in the drugs that so many of his peers are using, but rather in his prized possession: an electric guitar, which he loves playing in unconventional ways, \u201chitting a big distorted chord and letting it wash over me like rain from heaven.\u201d He has sex, joins and leaves bands, and falls headlong in love (with Melinda, a ticket counter worker at a theater in Cannery Row), but as he faces the prospect of friends leaving town for colleges and careers he can\u2019t afford to pursue, he decides that \u201cif I didn\u2019t start living dangerously I\u2019d never get anywhere.\u201d His dream is to go to New York City and break into its music scene.<\/p>\n
The fact that the dawning of this dream is deferred for over two-thirds of the novel might have been a severe detriment in the hands of a less talented writer, but Fairbank depicts all of Serge\u2019s teenage misadventures with such immense readability that the narrative flows effortlessly along. The mood changes from dangerous (on his first hitchhiking venture, Serge is picked up by \u201ca flat-out psycho\u201d and only barely escapes) to melancholy (\u201cthe wind was howling like an animal in pain,\u201d reads one passage; there \u201cwas a feeling of the Twentieth Century being stripped away,\u201d reads another) with an ease that feels effortless. Serge provides a unique perspective; he doesn\u2019t drink or smoke, and so is jokingly viewed as a \u201cnarc\u201d by young peers of his who do virtually nothing else, and the sadness that has shaped him is never far from his character. At one point, his absent mother sends him a note complaining about the cost of forwarding his magazines\u2014\u201cwhat a pal she was,\u201d he thinks bitterly. \u201cStrange to have your absentee mother tell you in writing that you\u2019re not even worth the price of a handful of stamps.\u201d The story can occasionally hit repetitive notes (Fairbank specifies many times that young Serge is always hungry), but readers will harbor such a strong hope that Serge will eventually escape the \u201clot of trouble\u201d his life sometimes seems to be that they won\u2019t begrudge the multiple reminders of his vulnerable humanity.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The novel\u2019s protagonist is named Sergio (a moniker given to him by his Mexican American father); he\u2019s known as Serge. When still a child in 1968, he and his older sister, Angela, are brought by their mother to Central California in search of \u201cthe Big Sur experience\u201d (Big Sur being a place where, supposedly, \u201cpeople […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":7581,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7580","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7580"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7580"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7580\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7581"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}