TOD:
Non-fiction-wise, I recently finished POSITIVELY 4th STREET by David Hajdu. It's about the folk music scene of the early 60s, though it mostly revolves around the careers of Joan Baez and Bob Dylan along with two others I only barely knew of, Richard Farina and Baez's sister, Mimi Baez Farina. The book was interesting to me in that I learned that rock 'n' roll had actually lost its momentum and popularity with the college age crowd in the late 50s/early 60s and that folk music was being embraced instead. Also interesting to learn about Baez and Dylan's early connection and their climbs to fame. And while I had heard of Richard Farina, I never knew what his role was in these early days of the counter culture of the 60s.
However, I think that Hajdu is a terrible writer. As with his other book I read on the comic book industry, he seems to dislike everyone he writes about and paints completely unflattering portraits of them. Baez achieved her fame by stealing the songs and styles of other artists and ultimately becomes a naive radical-chic dupe who attempts to maintain a clingy, needy dependant relationship with Dylan. Dylan is a weasel who lies constantly about himself and others. And the worst of the lot is Farina, who is an opportunistic, fame-thirsty glory-hound who uses and discards people on his quest for stardom as either a writer or musician. Even if these portrayals are half true, Hajdu makes wild assumptions about the motivations of the people he writes about that are based on simple events or actions. He's the kind of muckraker that would be right at home working at Fox News. Feh!
