{"id":842,"date":"2012-07-31T05:07:37","date_gmt":"2012-07-31T10:07:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=842"},"modified":"2012-07-31T05:07:37","modified_gmt":"2012-07-31T10:07:37","slug":"book-review-the-me-generationby-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2012\/07\/31\/book-review-the-me-generationby-me\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: The Me Generation\u2026By Me"},"content":{"rendered":"

As someone who (a) is a writer and (b) grew up immersed in the pop culture of the 1960s, Ken Levine<\/strong> would seem ideally suited to write a book about that decade. That he’s a comedy writer (M*A*S*H<\/em>, Cheers<\/em>, Frasier<\/span><\/em> and host of other well-known shows) would suggest he could deftly weave humor into such a book. And in fact those assumptions are not too wide of the mark. Levine’s new book The Me Generation…By Me: Growing Up in the ’60s<\/em> is a first-person account of Levine’s experiences in that legendary decade. He grew up in suburban Los Angeles \u2013 one of pop culture’s epicenters during that era \u2013 and went to school with any number of people who would go on to fame of their own.<\/p>\n

Early on \u2013 Levine’s three-page introduction is one of the best things about the whole book \u2013 the author sets out his unique point of view: he asserts (correctly, of course) that he, like most people who lived through the 60s did not in fact \u201c…attend Woodstock, move to Haight-Ashbury, protest the war by burning […] bras or banks, or form a band that played Woodstock.\u201d Levine’s story is told from the point of view of Everyman. Every man who grew up in Los Angeles, worked at a college radio station, and had a schoolboy crush on classmate Ann Jillian<\/strong>, that is.<\/p>\n

Perhaps surprisingly, given his professional background, Levine’s writing style is rarely laugh-out-loud funny. He has an acerbic tone not completely removed from the approach of Bill Bryson<\/strong>, but his writing in The Me Generation<\/em> rarely crackles with wit. Instead, it’s a solid, mildly\/occasionally humorous account of his formative years, a time filled with frustration, rejection, missed opportunities and a clutch of memorable episodes. In other words, The Me Generation<\/em> is a lot like real life: sometimes<\/em> funny, sometimes<\/em> sad, sometimes<\/em> more interesting than others.<\/p>\n

Levine throws in the occasional provocative aside \u2013 he wasn’t impressed, for example, with many of your favorite groups from the 60s; instead The Mamas and the Papas<\/strong> were just about his favorite act. But mostly, he strings together a chronological narrative of the era from his personal point of view as a young man. He’s neither Zelig<\/em>, Forrest Gump<\/em>, nor a character in a 1970s John Jakes<\/strong> novel series: The Me Generation<\/em> is not filled with tales of Levine meeting \u2013 let along hanging out with \u2013 Jim Morrison<\/strong>, Rodney Bingenheimer<\/strong> or Kim Fowley<\/strong>. Instead, the young Levine does cross paths with a number of radio jocks, experiences that would influence his subsequent career choices.<\/p>\n

Though The Me Generation<\/em> is told in mostly chronological order \u2013 no Ken Kesey<\/strong> he \u2013 readers can pretty well open the book to any page and read from there. The book is broken into dozens of vignettes, most of which run no more than a few pages. True, it’s more enjoyable to follow Levine’s tale from beginning to end (well, end of the decade, at least), but The Me Generation<\/em> works well as a series of quick, episodic reads as well.<\/p>\n

It’s a bit sad in the 21st<\/sup> century to realize that a worthy book such as The Me Generation…By Me<\/em> couldn’t find a publisher. (At least that’s the assumption I’m making about this self-published tome.) A writer with an established name and reputation has a good story to tell; in previous years, a book deal would have been a distinct possibility, if not a foregone conclusion. Well, there I go getting all nostalgic for days gone by. If you\u2019ll pardon me, I’m off to write my own book about growing up in…the 70s. (Not really, but I am <\/em>working on a book.)<\/p>\n

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As someone who (a) is a writer and (b) grew up immersed in the pop culture of the 1960s, Ken Levine would seem ideally suited to write a book about […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,65],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-842","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book","category-review","cat-10-id","cat-65-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/842","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=842"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/842\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=842"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=842"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=842"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}