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Title: The Life of Byron Jaynes by James Howard Kunstler ISBN: 0-393-30116-8 Publisher: W W Norton & Co Inc Pub. Date: 01 May, 1983 Format: Paperback List Price(USD): $7.95

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Average Customer Rating: 4.5 (2 reviews)

Rating: 5
Summary: lament for an era
Comment: i love this book. it went out of print far too quickly. i first found it almost two decades ago in a a used-book store in winnipeg. it is an amazing trip through the long, slow, devouring of innocence that was the 1960's. (side note here, it is very hard sometimes for me to believe that my childhood times are now a recognized historical period. i have always taken pride in that fact that my birth coincided with both john glenn's flight & the freedom riders setting out to mississipi.) much of the literature about that time is dated, or just plain bad, but, this book holds up. written over a decade after the sixties ended, kunstler has enough perspective to veiw the times with a clear eye. the basic plot, (the reason that i got it, for it is a story that has always haunted me.) is that jim morrison-here called byron jaynes-really did fake his death, & went on to create a new identity & life for himself. (in case you didn't know-this has been a legend for the past thirty years.) usually, i avoid roman-ala-clefs, because you keep pausing in your head, or, in my case, keeping a chart of who is supposed to be who, in any case, it is very distracting. (i read mostly sf/f, & they have a sub-genre called alternate-history, where the use the real names & peoples, just how things might have been different, & it goes from there.) however, this book just grabs you by the throat, & doesn't let go. it helps one make sense of this that crazy, wonderful, insane time, even though it began & ended in violence. i don't miss the worst parts of that time,(ie: vietnam, the assasinations, the civil rights murders, altamont, the manson family, triumph snatched from stopping at the moon, not going back or carrying on outward,-dammit, we could have a colony on mars now!) but, i sure resent the world now. there are times, hearing a piece of music from that time, or, lying awake at night, not being able to sleep, i think of all that wasted potential, the shocking waste of life, both in 'nam, & stateside. it all turned out so [darn] differently from the way it was supposed to, didn't it? reading this book is like having time machine. someday, i wish someone would make a terrific movie of this wonderful book, just so we could have a soundtrack with phil ochs & tim buckley predominant. there are times when i get somewhat bitter about life & the world as it is, but, this book helps. this is an important book, & it should be much more widely available. i desparetly hope it goes back into print & never goes out.

Rating: 4
Summary: My ALL TIME favorite work of fiction.
Comment: The Life of Byron James is an encapsulated view of sex, drugs and rock'n'roll. And, in my opinion, an response to members of the Jim Morrison Cult who want to believe that he isn't really dead. Its the happy(?) "Well, what if it went this way . . ." ending to an otherwise tragic life. Kuntsler's knowledge of rock'n'roll comes through on every page. I've read it more than once. And I'm always sorry that it ends. . .