Jeff Guinn's new book about your favorite serial killer and ours, former local Charles Manson (Simon & Schuster, $27.50) is actually an astute, in-depth look at California and San Francisco in the '60s and '70s.
The book, meticulously researched and with new interview material from former Manson family members, and some of Manson's actual relatives, is a detailed account of California coming unhinged in the wake of the Summer of Love and as the 1970s matured. Few other documents of the period (Didion's Slouching Towards Bethlehem and The White Album come to mind) focus on the disintegration and senselessness of the period, rather than on the parties and the rock stars. Against the context of Didion's reportage, though, and in light of other recent books about local cults of the 1970's (Julia Scheeres's wonderful A Thousand Lives, about Jim Jones and the People's Temple), Guinn's book focuses on how the decade that produced him could have masked Manson so successfully as just another weirdo. (He was neighbors with Neil Young for a time in Los Angeles, while he pursued a musical career, and was friends with Dennis Wilson.) Manson lived, famously, at 636 Cole Street, but he was also immediately involved in the protest scene at UC Berkeley, and spent early years in the Bay Area before he decamped for Los Angeles. His family was also, variously, pen pals with (and inspiration for) cult film hero John Waters, who dedicated the film Female Trouble to Tex Watson after an amicable prison visit. You can buy the book at The Booksmith, where we'll say hello to you, or at any other fabulous local independent bookstore.
The book, meticulously researched and with new interview material from former Manson family members, and some of Manson's actual relatives, is a detailed account of California coming unhinged in the wake of the Summer of Love and as the 1970s matured. Few other documents of the period (Didion's Slouching Towards Bethlehem and The White Album come to mind) focus on the disintegration and senselessness of the period, rather than on the parties and the rock stars. Against the context of Didion's reportage, though, and in light of other recent books about local cults of the 1970's (Julia Scheeres's wonderful A Thousand Lives, about Jim Jones and the People's Temple), Guinn's book focuses on how the decade that produced him could have masked Manson so successfully as just another weirdo. (He was neighbors with Neil Young for a time in Los Angeles, while he pursued a musical career, and was friends with Dennis Wilson.) Manson lived, famously, at 636 Cole Street, but he was also immediately involved in the protest scene at UC Berkeley, and spent early years in the Bay Area before he decamped for Los Angeles. His family was also, variously, pen pals with (and inspiration for) cult film hero John Waters, who dedicated the film Female Trouble to Tex Watson after an amicable prison visit. You can buy the book at The Booksmith, where we'll say hello to you, or at any other fabulous local independent bookstore.
