1967 — My Summer Reading
In 1967 I was a 20-year-old college student. I had not formed my political and personal identity but I was searching. I never took a “semester abroad” but I did hitchhike around Europe that summer, pretty much without a clear destination. I encountered many interesting people but largely enjoyed being alone. I’ve done a lot of reading in my life and much of what I read recedes into a foggy memory. But I still remember clearly the reading I did that summer, books that remain with me (and which I am now rereading). Why was that summer’s reading so impactful? Maybe it was my age, looking for who I wanted to be. Maybe it was the times, a great inflection point in the world. For whatever reason, my mind goes back to these texts again and again. The notes below are from a short contribution to the Storyworth memory project our kids have had us writing for.
The Prophet Armed by Issac Deutscher. I may have read this book before I left, the first volume of a three-part political biography of Leon Trotsky. I’m not sure who recommended it but I wanted to understand more about the Russian revolution and this carries you through the crucial years. I never became a Trotskyist, in fact I pretty much rejected the Trot opposition to the Soviet Union, but this was an impactful book in my path to communism. Later I read Ten Days That Shook the World by John Reed for more up-close accounts of the times.
Sexus by Henry Miller. I also got this one in Ann Arbor. I know I know. He’s dated to say the least. Needs a feminist reset. But I was enthralled by encountering a writer who would just open his mind and pour onto the page every and any thought he had, without editing designed to make himself look better. It’s an easy and goofy read and allowed me to think more loosely, blurring the lines between id and ego.
The Herring Gull’s World: A Study of the Social Behavior of Birds by Nikolaas Tinbergen. This I got at a small bookstore in London. Not sure why I picked it up as I was not, at that time, science or ecology minded. On a whim, I thought it would be interesting. And it blew my mind. It was my first encounter with a close observation of animal life, of nature really, and I still think about it, even today as we walked on the beach and encountered a huge flock of gulls. I began to look at the world differently, with more curiosity and love, than I ever had before.
The Man Who Cried I Am by John A. Williams. When I got to Paris, of course I looked up the famous Shakespeare and Company bookstore, founded by Sylvia Beach — the patron of many of the great writers of the twentieth century. It was a delightful spot, reminiscent of the legendary Gotham Book Mart in New York which I had haunted the previous summer. Here I encountered the newly published Black novel The Man Who Cried I Am. There are many passages in the book that I marked simply because they were beautiful, transformative prose. And more I should have marked. I see that Williams regarded the great Black writer Chester Himes as his mentor and Himes was the great promoter of Williams. This novel was out of print for some decades but has just been reissued in 2023 so I recently reread it. The casual objectification of women in the text was problematic and the introduction to the new edition by Ishmael Reed exposes (does not excuse) this contradiction. But still, what a prescient work; it speaks to our time exactly. Just a few worlds that are illuminated in the story of Max Reddick:
- Harlem culture and life in the 50’s and early 60’s
- Black expat community in Paris and Amsterdam
- Civil Rights and Black Power movements
- Black novels and journalism
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- World War II and the Holocaust
- Black-Jewish relations
- Love, lots of it, often with white women
- African independence movements, life in Nigeria
- Barely veiled characterizations of James Baldwin, Martin Luther King, Richard Wright, and Malcolm X
- US government duplicity and ultimately a genocidal plot against the Black community
I have often said that fiction moves me more than political analysis in my understanding of the world. It’s probably too far to go to claim that this book set me on my whole life path — but I do know that it was a huge influence on my world view, on “what is to be done,” and on the rich challenges of life in our times.
The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir. Also at Shakespeare and Company, the proprietor (perhaps George Whitman, who took over after Sylvia Beach died) recommended this one. I was at the time still enamored of the existentialists and the French postwar intellectual ferment. That was too hefty a book to carry around as I hitchhiked through Italy so I took note of it, getting a copy when I returned to Ann Arbor in the fall. As everyone has said since those years, she nails it.
Thief’s Journal by Jean Genet. This one I did pick up at Shakespeare and Company, a true outsider novel by the existentialist bad boy of France. This novel from 1943 chronicles the underworld life of Genet through the 30’s and early 40’s. He sought transgression in every way, against the law, the sexual and gender rules, even morality. He revels in being a thief, a prostitute, a homeless beggar, an informer, and a prisoner who is always on the move throughout Europe. In a way, he seeks to sanctify the very outsider status, the “fuck you” to bourgeois society, that he lives. This was a big deal for me and my generation in the 60’s, a powerful existentialist rebellion. It makes “On the Road” look like a joy ride in mommy’s car. Sartre was so taken with Genet’s work that he wrote a (much fatter) book called Saint Genet. After reading John A. Williams throughout Italy, it was quite something to read Genet while sleeping on the roof of the Gülhane Hotel near the Blue Mosque in Istanbul. I was among a bunch of European backpackers and lost souls, with hashish and opium flowing freely, and gender norms under radical assault. Genet was right there as a guide. I recently reread this and it has held up, to say the least.
Note that I was not always reading such heady stuff. I was enjoying pulp novels by Iceberg Slim (such as Pimp, the Story of My Life) before going to Europe and kept up with Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett as well as the poetry of Gwendolyn Brooks, Gabriela Mistral, and Pablo Neruda, and the oral histories of Studs Terkel.
Remembering that summer, I realize that books, especially fiction, have done more to shape my political and personal identity than political tracts. While I was hitchhiking and reading, my life back home was rocked by the 1967 Detroit rebellion. The world was turning upside down. When I got back to Ann Arbor, I destroyed my draft card in October, got drafted in November, went to Canada in March, went into the army as an organizer the following year, and went underground after that. Things moved fast in those years. But those books are still on my mind.
