Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time
or, what was on Daniel Molloyâs bookshelf in 1973?
Inspired by @volkswagonbluesâ and @islandbetweeenriversâ reading list of texts providing historical and cultural context for Daniel Molloy as journalist in the 1970s and 80s
This is, pretty much in its entirety (bar one or two references throughout the show and its extant material), assumptions Iâve made about the character. But, also: itâs my blog so I can do what I want. Dating works is somewhat inconsistent, as I opted for the date a piece was published in a collection or translation rather than when it first appeared in print if it seemed more realistic to have been acquired in that format.
Iâve found the archives of Rolling Stone and Playboy have been helpful in piecing together a whoâs who of literary life in the late 1960s and early 1970s, especially for a intellectually precocious teen from suburban Modesto, CA transplanted into the centre of countercultural life in Haight-Ashbury.
From what I can gather, being born in â53 means Daniel was just a year shy of being drafted to fight in the Vietnam War, an experience that would have profoundly effected his peers just a year or two older than him. Throughout his teenage years, heâs got the spectre of the possibility of being drafted hanging over his head. It reminds me of pop-inspirational phrases like âyou only live once,â which really puts his risk-taking, thrill-seeking behaviour into the perspective of yeah, this is someone who is trying to live life to the fullest every second of every day because the possibility of being drafted means that he might not make it past twenty. (Unfortunately! Louis & Armand also mean he might not make it past twenty either xoxoxo)
However, crucially, he did narrowly miss the draft, and despite that it would be horrible, I think thereâs an acute sense of having missed out on this profoundly altering experience as well. Moving to Haight-Ashbury, heâs six years late to the Summer of Love â67, and the rose-tinted image of hippies, peace, and love is replaced by the grittiness of speedfreaks and serial killing (the Zodiac Killer being active throughout 1969, when Daniel would have been sixteen). Heâs made it to San Francisco just a few years after its golden era, and i think this makes him even more determined to live, more determined to chase living life in order to make up for that, yknow?
i think the themes that heâs drawn to when reading are:
new journalism, and particularly when the journalist-as-rockstar persona is inserted into said reporting
the provocative, bacchanalian pursuit of pleasure, whether it be sex, drugs, or rock ânâ roll â and often sex mixed with violence in a way that is neither straightforward nor legible
travelogues and adventure stories that reflect his restlessness, particularly which let him romanticise far away places with thriving literary scenes like Paris and New York
a general aura of repressed queerness and crises of american masculinity (Capote, Tennessee Williams, Ginsburg, Hemingway)
war narratives as a vehicle for cold war/red scare anxieties
Without further ado, the actual book list:
Playboy magazine. People have long joked about reading Playboy for the articles, but it is the one piece of literature teenage Daniel is in-universe confirmed to have readily accessible, so Iâm running with âDanny actually does read it for the articles, thoughâ (and anyways, itâs Diana Rossâ Rolling Stones cover issue from Feb 1 1973 that he jerks off to). In 1973 alone, Playboy featured interviews with playwright Tennessee Williams; Huey Newton (co-founder of the Black Panther Party); news anchor and journalismâs elder statesman Walter Cronkite; science fiction novelist Kurt Vonnegut; and Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times Vietnam war correspondent David Halberstam. Other Playboy interviews of possible interest: Fidel Castro, Orson Welles, Michael Caine (1967); Norman Mailer, Truman Capote, sexologists William H. Masters and Virginia E. Johnson, Paul Newman (1968); Martin Luther King Jr., Marshall McLuhan, Allen Ginsberg (1969). Also of note: between 1969 and 1971, Playboy was publishing faked letters to the editor that eventually developed into the Illuminati conspiracy theories.
In terms of reporting from major national newspapers in circulation, significant stories that come to mind are the New York Times publication of the Pentagon Papers (1971) and Bob Woodward and Carl Bernsteinâs Watergate investigations for the Washington Post (1972-73). Itâs harder to gauge the circulation of underground newspapers like the Berkeley Barb (CA) and the Village Voice (NY) but its entirely likely that a resourceful and enterprising young reader with a point of view in Modesto, CA could get their hands on a copy.
Prose, Fiction & Nonfiction
The Little Red Book by Mao Zedong. At Berkeley, The Black Panthers would raise money by selling copies bought in bulk at markup to students. Absolutely makes sense that daniel would acquire (and actually read) a copy. Growing up in the wake of McCarthyism/Red Scare nonsense def makes me think he would see flirtations with communism as provocative and cool/edgy, but never back that flirtation up with follow-through.
The Hellâs Angels, a Strange and Terrible Saga (1966) by Hunter S. Thompson. Throughout the 1960s and 70s, the Hells Angels had a sizeable presence in San Francisco and Oakland â from what I can find they lived dead centre of Haight-Ashbury up until â69 if not later. As a teenager in Modesto, Daniel would have been geographically quite close (if not actually in attendance at) the 1969 Altamont Festival Rolling Stones performance where a teenage concertgoer was stabbed to death by a member of the Hells Angels.
Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail in â72 (serialized in Rolling Stone magazine) by Hunter S. Thompson. The quintessential text to understand â73 Daniel, imo. Fuck Nixon, Fuck Reagan, fuck the National Guard killing student protestors. Thompsonâs other works include âThe Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depravedâ (with illustrations by Ralph Steadman) and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
The New Journalism: An Anthology (1973) edited by Tom Wolfe. In addition to excerpts of Hunter S. Thompsonâs work already discussed above, the anthology collects In Cold Blood (1965) by Truman Capote, Slouching Towards Bethlehem (1968) by Joan Didion, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968) by Tom Wolfe, and Armies of the Night (1968) by Norman Mailer. I wonât do justice to summarizing the New Journalism here, but itâs def important.
Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) by Kurt Vonnegut. The quintessential Daniel Molloy fiction novel, to me. Exploration of post-traumatic stress disorder through an encounter with time travelling science fiction aliens. Takes on a new resonance for Daniel when heâs dealing with his own ptsd post-1973. Vonnegutâs other works include Catâs Cradle (1963) and Breakfast of Champions (1973). On the subject of Cold War anxieties, thereâs Catch-22 (1961) by Joseph Heller. I donât have much to say about it as Iâve not read it yet, but it feels like the kind of thing teenage Daniel living in Schrödinger's draft call-up would take to. Maybe also John Le CarrĂ©âs The Spy Who Came in From the Cold (1963) and The Looking Glass War (1965), the latter particularly for the palpable air of repressed homoeroticism and WWII nostalgia/Cold War anxiety.
A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway (published posthumously in 1964). Daniel absolutely spent his teenage years romanticising being an expat America writer in the Paris literary scene. Substance use, war, and crises of masculinity throughout. In addition to Hemingwayâs reporting on the Spanish Civil War (1937-1938), other works include novels The Sun Also Rises (1926), A Farewell to Arms (1929), and For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940).
George Orwell: Down and Out in Paris and London (1933), Burmese Days (1934), Homage to Catalonia (1938), Animal Farm (1945), Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949); and essays âBooks v. Cigarettesâ (1946), âDecline of the English Murderâ (1946), âPolitics and the English Languageâ (1946), and âWhy I Writeâ (1946). I think Orwellâs nonfiction writing would appeal to Daniel more than his fiction, especially when at the right age to romanticize the poverty-tourism of Down and Out. Also bonus points for Paris.
On the Road (1957), The Dharma Bums (1958), and The Subterraneans (1958) by Jack Kerouac. In particular, The Subterraneans is based on Kerouacâs interracial relationship with an African American woman in the 1960s. Heâd also probably read Naked Lunch (1959) by fellow Beat poet William S. Burroughs.
Lolita (1955) by Vladimir Nabokov, both for its salacious notoriety and its unreliable narration. Like myself, Daniel feels like the kind of teenager who would read Lolita at sixteen as a provocation in a conservative environment, but come away genuinely enjoying it.
Howl and Other Poems (1956) by Allen Ginsberg, particularly the edition published locally by San Franciscoâs City Lights Books Pocket Poets series.
A series of miscellaneous titles Iâd group together as âDaniel Actually Did the Assigned Reading in High School English Classâ â The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger (âGet off that bench, brotherâ), Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, and âThe Second Comingâ by W. B. Yeats. Most significantly, I imagine high school is where heâd be exposed to the work of American playwrights Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller. The Glass Menagerie (1944), A Streetcar Named Desire (1947), and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955) by Tennessee Williams. In the context of his relationship with Louis, I think itâs fun to imagine heâs familiar with/attracted to the Southern Gothic by way of Tennessee Williams (again with the crises of masculinity, the spectre of war, the repressed sexuality). Williams and Death of a Salesman (1949) by Arthur Miller, present the life Daniel could have had ie. the alcoholic husband, housewife vacuuming on Valium, etc.
If thereâs anything else anyone thinks Iâve missed, feel free to hit me with a reply or a dm or an @ or whatnot. stay freaky & support yr local library x
ellievsbear
discoholicmusic
jbbartram-illu
dailybridgerton
tangentwithtanner
titsay
dededos
romaincrisis
