Tuesday, October 18, 2011

EAT THE DOCUMENT (2006) by Dana Spiotta

This terrific book centers on a pair of 1970's Weather Underground radicals (Merry Whittaker and Bobby DeSotto) who have been on the lamb for 20 years after commiting a terrorist bombing. You of course get a feel for what it would be like to have to assume false identities and fear the law catching up to you at any moment. But what I really liked about this book was meeting the young 1990's Gen-Xers that the two main charactors lives now revolve around. Marys teenage son, Jason, is obessed with the music of his mothers youth, especially the Beach Boys (He has every album and obscure limited edition single and seems to think about them every waking hour). While DeSotto now runs a San Franciso bookstore populated with teenage "radicals" who do little except talk about the harmless pranks they want to pull on big box store chains. I could really indentify with these kids, being of the same age and having had the same fasination with 1960's culture. (In my case, collecting as many Grateful Dead tapes I could get my hands on). For me, these '90s teenagers are what makes this book worth tracking down.

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