The Garden of What Was and Was Not
The Autobiography of X
By David Stone
Published by iUniverse
Pages: 250
Size: 6x9
Hardcover $26.95
Paperback $16.95
E-book $6.00
ISBN: 9780595439454
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Book Review by Robert Berryhill
Copyright 2009 Robert Berryhill
A remarkable fictional autobiography of a teenaged boy coming of age in the turbulent 1960s and 70s has been written by David Stone.
The Garden of What Was and Was Not - The Autobiography of X, has been published by
It is a must read for anyone wanting to recall the events that forever changed our culture, or for anyone under 40 who did not live through those events.
David Stone nails down his premise this way: "Trying to follow the track of a life backward to some defining moment is an exercise in creating myth . . ."
The Garden of What Was and Was Not follows Peter McCarthy edging into adulthood while his world is violently changing daily.
David Stone begins the journey in the hot July of 1964, the first summer after Peter McCarthy heard about the assassination of President Kenney over the school PA system. David Stone uses razor-sharp images to convey the shifting moods of the country as it stumbles toward the tragedy of 9-11 almost 40 years later.
Jack Ruby has killed Oswald, LBJ has taken the reins from the fallen JFK, and "that ugly old Lyndon was about to toss a few hundred lives into the cauldron of hell in Vietnam . . ."
Although Roy Orbison has crooned "Pretty Woman" into the fasted selling record ever, some upstarts from Britain, the Beatles, come to America and explode before thousands of screaming girls.
Peter and a friend, both 16, are chasing after their first girlfriends in 1964. The boys ended the long summer day by taking the girls to a secluded spot in the dark park. They "necked until there was nowhere else the girls would let us go except home."
While following the girls home the young frustrated Peter concludes: "Girls stuck together and outsmarted us."
But girls aren't the main focus of Peter's goal in life. His quest is for a place to write the poetry and stories that are crowding his heart and soul. His journey from upstate New York to escape a skeptical father and a deadening job takes him to the San Francisco bay area where the Beat Generation and the peace movement hold sway.
"Romance and visions of the ordinary life we all once thought our inheritance, both doomed illusions waiting for the Sixties to destroy them," Peter concludes.
Peter loses friends along his journey. People, including a wife and family, drop out of his life as new friends enter. Peter even has some leave forever, dead in traffic accidents or at the hands of a mugger.
"Life is thinner than you think," author David Stone writes, "and sometimes it goes away easily."
David Stone has a remarkable way of crafting images throughout his book. Growing up, he writes, is like falling uphill."
Years later, as the country marks the second anniversary of the 9-ll tragedy, the main character Peter McCarthy is much wiser wearing the cloaks of adulthood.
"In 1966, no one saw all that the decades ahead delivered, for good or ill, but all events are cumulative as much as sequential. In 2003, we can see every event that brought us here, every action, every accident, every twist of the stars, everything we did or didn't do."
