Looking Good: Difficulty at the Beginning - Softcover

Maillard, Keith

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1897142099 ISBN 13: 9781897142097

Publisher: Brindle & Glass Pub Ltd, 2002

Synopsis

The summer of 1969 is already a distant memory; the psychedelic underground has turned on itself. John Dupre has deserted a perfectly satisfying life as a student in Toronto, drawn back to the US by the need to make a difference in the Revolution. He's living in Boston, under an assumed name because he's on the FBI's wanted list for draft evasion. When John and his companions seize control of an underground newspaper and are put on the Weatherman hit list, there's really no place to hide.

About this title

About the Author:

Keith Maillard was born in Wheeling, WV in 1942, moved to Canada in 1970. Throughout his career, he has won many literary awards and written several novels, including The Clarinet Polka, Light in the Company of Women and Gloria. He teaches at the University of British Columbia, and lives with his wife and two daughters.

From Booklist:

This is the culminating novel in Maillard's four-volume cycle, Difficulty at the Beginning, which also includes Running (2005), Morgantown (2006), and Lyndon Johnson and the Majorettes (2006). Like John Dos Passos in his U.S.A. trilogy, Maillard aims to capture a cataclysmic shift in the American cultural and political landscape. Set in Boston during the Harvard Square riot, the novel follows draft evader John Dupre and his androgynous soul mate, Pam Zalman, both of whom work for the local underground newspaper and feverishly attempt to define their politics and their -gender-bending relationship. Dupre's best friend, Tom Parker, a Vietnam vet turned big-time drug dealer, provides plenty of comic relief and a window into an industry that started as a lark and quickly turned violent. The novel is thick with details about the factionalism that split the Left, pitting SDSers against Weathermen, and the pacing suffers for it. But it also offers a cast of soulful characters, a heartfelt examination of gender identity, and a meticulously detailed portrait of the 1960s, from tear gas to tarot cards. Joanne Wilkinson
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About this edition

• Publisher: Brindle & Glass Pub Ltd
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 1897142099
• ISBN 13: 9781897142097
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 440