1968: the year that rocked the world/I looked alive

[January 21st, 2004] 1968: the year that rocked the world

Why couldn't my high-school history book read like this? In a book that recalls the single most violent and volatile year in recent history, author-historian Mark Kurlansky (Salt, Cod)has produced a brilliant bit of nonfiction lit in 1968. More importantly, as Kurlansky writes of black power, the Chicago riots, the assassinations of King and Kennedy, Prague Spring, the senility of de Gaulle, the generation gap, and every other shred of late-'60s history, he has you all but convinced that it's happening all over again.

That's not to say Kurlansky twists the facts, but if you expect a simple, provocative history of hippies and student marches, well, you're in for one hell of an education. Kurlansky admits to having a somewhat biased perspective, and though his assaults on classic '60s villains like Dick Nixon, Ronald Reagan and Columbia University's Grayson Kirk could sway just about anyone to the hippie camp, this is by no means a simple vindication of truckin' '60s liberalism.

The author spots the facts and anecdotes hidden in every dark fold of the historical record's underbelly, and his raging recollection of the temper, taste and anger of an era of police brutality, government cover-ups and civil-rights violence leaves no one unscathed.

As Kurlansky explores cultural tensions all over the world, he actually manages to tie it all together: Abbie Hoffman on HUAC, Allen Ginsberg on Cuban politics, Martin Luther King Jr. on the war in Vietnam. Kurlansky will have you on your feet and up and screaming, "Fuck the war!" before the last page is turned. Get a freaked-out '60s life, man. Nate Berne

i looked alive

Forgive me if I compare the bold new story collection by Gary Lutz, I Looked Alive, to his obscure yet seminal debut, Stories in the Worst Way (and I mean seminal in all its definitions here). Both books invest in Lutz's freakishly complex and enjoyable sentences. In fact, you can argue that some of these pages don't even contain a fathomable story. But where Stories... would often attempt to connect the dots, I Looked Alive constantly threatens to float over your head. Like in the story "Uncle," in which Lutz's narrator states that "we would haze each other into a shared, mutual nap." It's hard to figure out what that might entail, but then again, that's part of the Lutz magic. So many of his descriptions, his strange angles, his narrative fetishes, are related directly to the human body and/or language (and the constant manipulation of both).

Identity is also an important theme in Lutz's work. One of the beguiling charms of his narrators is their slippery orientation. You're sometimes not sure whether it's a male or female you're reading along with, or if they're straight or gay, young or old. About the only thing they have in common is, they ruminate deeply.

In I Looked Alive, however, Lutz seems to stick to the voice of the hanging-out-in-the-bathroom predatory male. It's creepy yet stunning, even brutally funny at times. In his first book, the more elusive narratives gave the stories a more airy, whimsical feel.

Lutz has been heralded as a "master" and a "revolutionary"--and I agree. He's also what is known as a writer's writer. Kevin Sampsell