Lyndon Johnson and the Majorettes.

Joseph Jones is a reference librarian in the Koerner Library at the
University of British Columbia.

This third novel in a coming-of-age quartet serves as a bridge between early 60s college life in Morgantown, West Virginia and late 60s hippie life in Boston. It does not stand on its own as well as the other three novels.

After a year or two of bumming around, starting in Miami and ending in Los Angeles, college dropout John Dupre spends the summer of 1965 unemployed and back in his West Virginia hometown. His lack of a student draft deferment looms large as Lyndon Johnson escalates American involvement in Vietnam.

The story is much more a matter of mood than event. John’s family has moved into a rundown apartment after his father has suffered a debilitating stroke. John has put on far too much weight. Hot and humid weather oppresses. Drinking becomes a primary activity.

John spends a lot of time hanging out with two friends from high school who share the disaffections of an in-between world of waiting for an undefined something else. One friend’s younger sister provides contrast to their own lost enthusiasm for the future.

Bogged down in trying to write a Civil War novel, John starts digging into the family history that has served as inspiration. He only discovers mundane realities that complement other disillusionments.

Excellent writing sings the reader into the limbo of a particular time and place. “We’d missed the golden moment; all that was left was the long last slow blue fade.” (Stringing together four good adjectives is hard to do.)

At the beginning of the novel, John aspires to “articulate a vision [of] waste and damnation.” At the end he finds that all his identities have melted away.