Wednesday, December 11, 2013

Top ten books about communes

Ewan Morrison is the author of four novels: Swung, Menage, Distance, and Close Your Eyes, and a collection of short stories.

For the Guardian he tagged his top ten books about communes, including:
Drop City by TC Boyle

It's the late 60s in California and a loose group of refuseniks, draft dodgers, musicians and pot smokers escape from the scene in Haight Ashbury to find true freedom on virgin soil in the wilds of Alaska. What they find instead are wild animals that eat their goats, an epidemic of genital lice, a phenomenon know as winter and rather hostile neighbours who have guns. TC Boyle's epic of culture clash presents us with one of the problems inherent in novels about communes – there are so many characters that we need an index and they have names like "Pan" and "Star". Who is the protagonist? No one, the commune is against protagonists!
Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue