Bats in the House

There are literary reminiscences that reek of self-congratulation over one's arbitrary proximity to movers and shakers who made a significant cultural and/or historical impact. Andy Bernstein's CALIFORNIA SLIM aspires to, and achieves, more than that. Andy was THERE, at the onset of that post-'50s revolution that, as a poet once put it, roared as it ripped the threadbare fabric of an age. Andy was no distant, casual observer during the tumultuous '60s and '70s; he was at the heart of...
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There are literary reminiscences that reek of self-congratulation over one's arbitrary proximity to movers and shakers who made a significant cultural and/or historical impact. Andy Bernstein's CALIFORNIA SLIM aspires to, and achieves, more than that. Andy was THERE, at the onset of that post-'50s revolution that, as a poet once put it, roared as it ripped the threadbare fabric of an age. Andy was no distant, casual observer during the tumultuous '60s and '70s; he was at the heart of the maelstrom, and writes about it with an apparently photographic memory, candor, humor, honest language, and an engaging perspective....The story begins, for God's sake, with Bernstein and his banjo teacher, a certain Jerry Garcia. Andy, a tall Jewish boy from Palo Alto, California, divided his time between the usual adolescent interests and music, for which he would go on to provide a capital M" through the promotion and staging of concerts in Palo Alto and elsewhere in the San Francisco Bay Area, electric with a sense of liberation and innovation. Andy joked once that "it's good to have high friends in places." "Got one to burn?" was a question consistently asked of the tall hippie from the Bay Area.Flying from Hawaii after a meeting with Willie for the first time, Andy kept "replaying the last few days in my mind. It felt like reading a really good book that I couldn't put down." That feeling led directly, if gradually, to CALIFORNIA SLIM. And you, reader, won't be able to put it down.- A review Tony Compagno, a San Mateo-based writer/editor."