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The ‘60s
by Reed Farrel Colemen
In writing my latest and penultimate Moe Prager Mystery, Onion Street, one of my biggest
challenges was to try to bring the ‘60s to life for my readers without getting
kitschy or campy. It is too easy for artists to reduce a significant historical
era to popular touchstones and icons and no era, I think, is more easily
reduced to such things than the ‘60s. Whereas shows like Mad Men labor to get things just right and are very successful at
doing so, I’ve found most books, TV shows, and movies not from that era tend to
go for the clichés. All kids wear love beads, granny glasses, bell bottoms, and
sandals. They all make the peace sign by putting their index and middle fingers
into Vees or pump their fists and say, “Right on!” or “Power to the people!” or
“Groovy.” or “Hey, man, you’re bringing me down.” or “Cool it. Here comes the
Fuzz.” or “I had a bad trip, baby.” They only listen to the Beatles, Bob Dylan,
or the Doors. Their rooms are covered in Peter Max posters and the boys all
burn their draft cards. Fathers always wear white shirts with skinny black ties.
They have brush cuts and go to work at jobs in defense plants. Moms wear floral
printed frocks, vacuum the house, smoke cigarettes, and drink too much. It’s
all just silliness. If everyone burned their draft cards, how did we manage to
get 55,000 American sons and daughters killed in Vietnam?
When I think back on it, I am almost breathless at how much
turmoil occurred in such a brief period of time. In the first part of 1968
alone, there was the Pueblo incident, the Tet Offensive, Apollo missions 5 and
6, and the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Bobby Kennedy. But as
much as we would like to make those days all about the chaos, it’s my job as an
artist to hold the mirror up to the reality of the times. The fact is that in
spite of it all, my dad got up every morning and went to work. My big brothers
went to college every day and I walked to PS 209. My mom cooked and cleaned,
spoke on the phone to her sister. Life went on. That’s what I kept reminding
myself as I wrote: life went on. Because as horrible or wonderful as all those
events were, they didn’t happen in Brooklyn and they didn’t happen to me. The
focus of the book was Moe’s world, how he dealt with things in his world. I tried
very hard not to lapse into cliché. I hope I was successful.
It’s a good lesson for writers of all stripes. I think the
best historical novels are those that focus on the little things, not the broad
strokes. Focus on the people, on the characters, not on their trappings. I had
a wonderful poetry professor at Brooklyn College named James Merritt. He taught
classes in both Romantic and Victorian poetry. One of the things he said that I
will never forget is that readers mustn’t ever devalue the feelings of people
in the past. That cultures and technologies may change, but feelings are
feelings. I always keep that in mind
when I write about the past.
4 comments:
Hi, Reed - Welome Back, my friend. Congratulations on your latest launch. I loved loved loved ONION STREET, and my crush on Moe is still firmly in place.
Kaye, I've already read ONION STREET, too, and loved it like you did. Thank goodness we all do have one more Moe Prager book in our future after this one.
--Marjorie of Connecticut
Good post, Reed. So true, so much history and big events, but our lives had a lot of everyday stuff too. Onion Street was a very good look at that time and place. Thanks for your very good writing. Bobbie
I look forward to reading your book. I'm a little older than you guys, and I spent most of the sixties raising children. We knew what was going and struggled the horrors, but mostly we, too went about our business. We had pretty heated discussions, and yearned for the freedom we saw in the "flower" children. It seems like a dream now.
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