When I Was a Low-Life

What this book is about.It's about innocence. (Innocence is always nice.) It's about stalking and bigotry and a peculiar but passing glitch in the American psyche, called the Sixties. It's about a nice old lady with the solid foundation of two easily recognizable highly respected last names but a teetering mind. It's about winos and junkies and arrogance and shame and a $6000 bicycle (back then that was a chunk of change.) There's a guy in there who built a 19 foot mahogany speedboat in his basement. There are rednecks in there, naturally, and several black people-but only one who thinks the world owes him anything-and a Jewish tailor or two. There are car stories concerning a '57 Chevy and several Rolls Royces and a Rambler...oh, and one Peugeot and two Mercedes. There are pick-up trucks that get involved, and a dog who has a way with cards. Of course there's sex in there; sex both vulgar and pure. There are stories about work and stories about trees. Because it's the Sixties there's something in there about war and resistance and the philosophy of those both involved and wishing only to remain un. There are stories about acid and drug dealers and reckless driving and the Rolling Stones and Norman Mailer, and though some people insist it was Art Garfunkel, it was Paul Simon. But, Bob Dylan walks through, there's no doubt about that, and there's a Persian prince and stories about coleslaw and excursions to California, and more. Here's what's weird, it's all true. This is not a novel, it's the memories of a bitter old bastard with his head screwed on backward, gazing at the past with a cold but compassionate, somewhat weepy, eye. It took four years to live it, 40 years to think about it and something more than three years to write about it.