The Annual Book Review

You know, I love books. As a matter of fact, I've had my own library card for years. There's nothing I like better than having a free weekend to just unplug and bury my face in three or four 'tomes' from the library. Sometimes I'll even buy a book. But it would have to have some pretty damn good pictures in it for me to go so far as to actually want to own it.

Anyway, I read a book a few weeks ago. Well, really I just read the introduction and skimmed the rest and looked at the pictures. ALL of the pictures I might add. And all of the photo captions too. And that book will be the subject of this year's 'Book Talk.'

It's called, or titled, if you prefer - 'The Great Funk - Falling Apart and Coming Together (On a Shag Rug) in The Seventies' by Thomas Hine and published by the good people at Overlook Press.

At first I was kind of overwhelmed by the title - The Great Funk - well, what the heck is that? But it turns out it's all about the Seventies. As in the 1970s. You all remember the 7T's right? I think Ashton Kutcher put it best when he was once caught in a serious moment while promoting his television show and he philosophised that "If you remember the '70s, you were probably there."

Anyhoo, on with the review -

"I think about those days whenever some blowhard starts talking about the anonymity of the suburbs or the mindlessness of the TV-generation. Because we all knew that inside those identical boxes, with its Dodge parked out front, with its white bread on the table and its TV-set glowing blue in the falling dusk, there were people with stories."

Know who said that? The grown 'Kevin Arnold,' narrator of 'The Wonder Years,' 1988.

Like Kevin Arnold, I was a teenager in such a suburb in the 1970s - Riverside in Windsor, Ontario. You can't get much closer to living the American Dream than that. And what I remember most is what a great time it was to be young. I missed out on being a '60s hippie by a couple of years, but the early 1970s had enough residual after-burn still smokin' that it didn't really matter.

It was the kind of time when you would be hitch-hiking across town, hop into a car and casually be handed a lit joint by the driver. That would never happen today. Fear of the tobacco police would nix that possibility.

It was the kind of time when every summer, thousands of kids lined the Trans-Canada hitching their way to Vancouver. Just for something to do. And as a way to avoid being hassled about getting a summer job. Teens would never do that today. Fear of serial killers and a lack of gumption killed that dream.

Yep, kids were different back then. And I don't know who said it, but 'people' were different back then too. It was probably 'Hermie' in 'The Summer of 42' but that doesn't matter.

And yet, the general concensus seems to be that the '70s sucked. Well, the truth is, that by the end, they did suck. But for a few good years, they were golden.

The decade blew in on the fumes from Woodstock. It saw the emergence of heavy metal as the new 'hard rock'; it saw gender-bending glam go mainstream - and the birth of punk. And yes, disco. How's that for musical diversity.

On television, the vast wasteland was populated by Mary Tyler Moore, Barney Miller, Bob Newhart, the Jeffersons and the Bunkers. And that was just the sitcoms. On movie screens there was 'The Godfather,' 'Joe,' 'Love Story' and 'Network.' And it became socially acceptable to take your date to a porno movie.

And like every other great decade, it had big hair. Really Big Hair. Guys actually went out and got their hair permed into a huge ball of curls. Not me though, but that goes without saying. ... And all the chicks looked like Olivia Newton-John.

There are many decades I wish I had been a grown-up in - the 1920s with Fitzgerald and Hemingway; the '50s with Kerouac and the Rat Pack and the early 1960s with George Jetson. I prefer almost any decade to the one I happen to be living in.

But I can't imagine a better time to be a teenager than the 1970s. Bob Seger played a dance at my high school when I was in Grade 11 and sang his new hit, the era-defining 'Lookin' Back.' In Windsor, Ont., it don't get much cooler than that.

But undeniably, there is good reason why the 1970s remain so reviled by the adults who lived through them. There was poverty, unemployment, racial problems, a high crime rate, gas shortages, Watergate-fuelled cynicism and that whole Vietnam War thing. No doubt about it, some bad shit went down, baby. As early as mid-decade, in 'Back in 72,' Bob Seger was singing, "It was so hip to be negative/So square to try and believe."

They say that America lost its innocence when Kennedy was shot, but by the end of the 1970s, it had lost its spirit. The space race had fuelled much of the 1960s and the result was that in the early '70s, men were walking on the moon. But by the end there was disco, too much cocaine and the beginning of the birth of the Age of Irony. The decade may have come in like a rocket ship, but it went out like a turd.

All of this is wonderfully documented in 'The Great Funk,' by Thomas Hine, who did the same thing to the 1950s in his earlier book,(the highly recommended)'Populuxe.'

Hine is no blowhard. He's one of us and is equally fascinated and repulsed by the decade which began when he was in his early twenties. He spends a lot of time talking about the defining moments of the period - Nixon & Watergate, gay rights, the women's movement, mainstream porn, and mass protests over just about anything - but for me the highlights are the photos, taken from magazine advertisements and the daily newspapers. They capture the era in all its gaudiness, glory and flatulent earnestness. And Hine's photo captions are the best thing. And that's meant as a compliment. They contain his funniest - and most direct and honest writing.

However, the book is short on stories of people like Kevin Arnold. So let me offer one.

At the end of the decade, Hine sums up the Great Malaise by explaining, "Those who only shortly before, were mad as hell and not going to take it anymore, had decided that they simply didn't want to be bothered."

Here's a more personal version of that - 1978, I'm sitting in a class in University College at the U.W.O. Popular film professor Seth Feldman walks in, sees us all sitting there in the dark, flicks on the lights and mutters under his breath, "You just know The Revolution is over when no one knows enough to turn on the lights."