Book Review
Book Review
A Compelling Tale
By R . W . Greene
In times as troubled as these , a conscious reader seeks refuge . Not necessarily pure escape . Rather , something solid and secure — the truth would be refreshing — yet also familiar , or at least recognizable . Conscious Marin readers will find in David Talbot ’ s Season of the Witch a masterful example that fills this need , a compelling tale of the city of San Francisco during its most contentious , revolutionary years , the ’ 60s and ’ 70s . Talbot is a seasoned writer and editor , clearly in love with his hometown , and this combination — command of the narrative craft and intimate knowledge of his subject — will keep the conscious reader oblivious to the external world for more than a few hours .
There ’ s SAN FRANCISCO , the counterculture brand and historical stereotype , and then there ’ s San Francisco the city , where real people live — and where they also die , dance , freak out , form groups , write music , play music , feed , conspire , eat , pray , love , mutilate , cook , and rejoice together . The joy of this book is how vividly Talbot shows how and why the latter created the former , and how , thus , this San Francisco arguably changed American history . The more morose among us will also find Season of the Witch quite instructive in detailing the fallibility and frailty of good intentions .
“ It was a very uptight Irish Catholic city ,” says one of Talbot ’ s sources , by way of context-setting and background to the Summer of Love
38 MARIN ARTS & CULTURE that acts as the book ’ s narrative fulcrum . These details , of San Francisco city life through the ’ 40s , ’ 50s and early ’ 60s , will startle those who know only the city ’ s recent history and its stereotype : the rank racism and homophobia of the SFPD ( who harassed the gay population more fiercely than New York cops did theirs ); Balkanized neighborhoods ( Chinatown residents did not dare cross Broadway ); a law-enforcement establishment corrupt to its core ; a tightly wound and incestuous old ( white ) old boys ’ network that , hand-in-hand with the Roman Catholic archdiocese , controlled all the money and the power . Their rigidity , greed , and failure — of both imagination and charity — permitted , among other things , the depredations of unchecked unrestrained urban development in the ’ 60s that in turn birthed complaints , protests , and a culture of grassroots activism that is still with us . All politics are local , Tip O ’ Neill said , and in San Francisco , the “ counter ” in counterculture was as much against local values and mores as it was against the national ones .
For , in the response to these splenetic forces , there was no such imaginative failure on the part of the many who pushed back and then kept on pushing . Courage and energy were also in plentiful supply . Talbot ’ s portrayals of the famous — Bill Graham ( the Napoleon of Rock ), Bill Walsh , Lawrence Ferlinghetti , Rose Pak , Janis Joplin , George
Moscone , Dianne Feinstein , Wes Nisker , Hibiscus , Margo St . James , Cleve Jones , the Hallinan and Alioto families , to name only a minuscule subset of the city ’ s overwhelming cast of characters of this era — are all finely , resolutely and intimately drawn . They were all , apparently , human ; frail , irresolute , frightened . Also determined . Talbot makes us appreciate them more .
Equally well rendered are the portraits of the city ’ s spirits during its darkest hours — Jonestown , the Patty Hearst kidnapping , the SLA ’ s crazed guerilla war , and for Talbot , the worst time of all , the Zebra murder spree from October 1973 to April 1974 . San Franciscans were terrified . “ People got off the streets as quickly as they could ,” Talbot writes ; sales at bars and other places of hospitality plummeted .
Yet , it is after even more shadows arose around the city — the murders of then-Mayor George Moscone and Harvey Milk in 1978 and the beginnings of the miasma of the AIDS epidemic — that Talbot finds and places as San Francisco ’ s redemption . His portrait of thousands upon thousands of caring San Franciscans who left fear behind to tend to their wounded neighbors — caring men and women in both government and in the street — reminds us , without judgement , of our obligation to keep doing so in the face of any approaching darkness . MAC