Sway: A Novel
by Zachary Lazar
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Book Summary Information
Author: Zachary LazarEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2008-01-07
ISBN: 0316113093
Number of pages: 272
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Book Reviews of Sway: A Novel
Book Review: "Everyone under thirty had decided to be an exception."
Summary: 4 Stars
In a series of perceptions, from the obscure and disturbing films of Kenneth Anger to the birth of the Rolling Stones and the shocking Tate-LoBianca murders on the west coast, Lazar gathers tenuous threads to unite these diverse subjects in an elaborately woven tapestry of sex, drugs and the budding revolution of a generation of young people who break from the conventionality of their lives in search of a new definition. A culture of rampant drug use provides the means of escape, from psychedelics to pot and hash, even heroin. Once conventions are breached, the young break from family to create their own realities, new families of peace, harmony, love and experimentation with boundaries. A disaffected young filmmaker, Kenneth Anger, who never fits comfortably into the world, begins to experiment with the random images that speak to his quest for deeper meaning, the profound message he is driven to reveal in his work, collages of homoerotic urgency, violence and the emerging rhythms of the new music on the horizon.
Anger is the link to the disparate characters in Lazar's troubling paean to the sixties, from Bobby Beausoleil, one of Charlie Manson's mindless minions to Brian Jones, the putative impetus behind a loose-knit group of young English musicians discovering a new sound that will energize a generation thirsty for music that defines their angst. The author's affinity for Anger is clear in Sway, Anger's convoluted perceptions and struggle with his dark side, his view of the evolving scene colored by an internal battle that yields the images that dominate his films, a fringe-life dedicated to his art from Europe to San Francisco to the moat-encircled estate of Keith Richards, where Mick Jagger considers cooperating in Kenneth's latest endeavor. All is drug-fueled, the birth of the Stones' unique sound, Manson's increasing influence on his followers, Brian Jones' embrace of pharmaceuticals to avoid the reality of his inability to change the direction of the group.
Lazar writes of a generation so enamored of change that they fall victim to the intense pleasures of the moment, unable to construct meaningful societal change other than a response to the historic traumas of the end of the decade, the Kennedy assassinations, Martin Luther King, the increasing toll of the Vietnam War. While the filmmaker lives in squalor, capturing the images of beautiful and depraved young men, the unique construct of the Rolling Stones bursts upon a country ready for such aggression, dramatic gestures of rebellion and dissatisfaction. The result is disturbing, a sense that everyone got it wrong, denying the flaws of their utopia as violence decimates a movement described as peace and love, from the death at the Stones' concert at Altamont to Manson's west coast killing spree and the unnecessary death of Brian Jones. While much of the novel rings with authenticity, it is clear that memory is etched in the mind of the beholder, in this case a fruitless quest for an elusive freedom, short-circuited by a pharmacopeia of induced nirvana. Luan Gaines/2008.
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