I watch way too many productivity videos on YouTube. That's a pretty broad category, of course--like "true-crime podcasts" or "TV dating shows"--but there's one piece of advice that gets echoed again and again, and it's the original nugget of shoe-box wisdom: Just do it. If you want to change a habit or take on a big project, don't wait until the weather conditions are ideal; you've picked out the perfect pen, ink, and paper combo; and your vision board is on point. Just start.
Yes, yes, stipulated. But if that big project is writing a book, and your delivery date is 18 months out, what do you do the week after you make a deal?
Fortunately, I'm not starting from scratch, since I spent about six months working on the proposal. That was a mildly grueling, hugely fun collaboration with my genius agent, Maggie Cooper. I researched and read--and did a tiny bit of reporting--in order to write the sample chapter, but by its nature that was an isolated piece. I didn't have to connect it with larger themes and other chapter topics--other than in the "promise language" of the proposal.
But now I do--and before I start digging six separate Buneary boreholes, I decided to try to get into a 1970s frame of mind. It's not that all the places I'll be writing about originated in the '70s--though several did--but even the locations that pre-dated that glorious decade were transformed in those years. So I need a good grip on the period. I started by reading Rick Perlstein's amazing series of histories of the period, which may well fall in the "too good to read in the early stages of a writing project" category!
I should note here that I lived through the '70s, but I was on the other side of the Atlantic. I learned about America from the British TV news, the papers (we took the Mirror, which was pretty UK-centric, but our next-door neighbor got the Daily Express, which was absolutely packed with U.S. news--it's a terrible Tory rag, but it was great for a budding America-phile); and my school's subscription to Newsweek. (Yes, I do sometimes wonder if my childhood reading habits were some kind of media-studies experiment. Not ruling it out.)
My first--and possibly most enduring--news obsession was the kidnapping, conversion, capture, and trial of Patty Hearst. It gave me a very skewed idea of life in America, and although the story doesn't quite fit into the narrative arc of my book, I pulled a few volumes from my Hearst bookshelf to remind myself of the vibe of the time. Generational rupture, being inspired by political ideas to make huge life changes, and the zeal of the convert all play out in that very weird historical episode, and those factors are also key to the evolution of lesbian culture in the 1970s. (Patricia Campbell Hearst even changed her name--multiple times--as she cycled through her various identities.) I'm now listening to the audiobook of Jeff Guinn's The Road to Jonestown: Jim Jones and Peoples Temple for similar reasons.
Inspired by my colleagues at the fantastic new Slate podcast One Year--the first season is about 1977--I thought about checking out front pages on Newspapers.com--but I knew I'd get hopelessly distracted by that experience. However, I did find a concise '70s catchup machine: Doonesbury strips.
Many years ago, Doonesbury played a key role in my understanding of American culture. Yes, I was an American Studies major at (a British) university, but I credit the days spent poring over my first girlfriend's collection of Doonesbury books in Newark, Delaware, as my graduate-level seminar in American culture. (The other key text was The Official Preppy Handbook.) History in 24 panels a week (I don't remember what they did with the Sunday color strips) has an admirable precision.
So I tried to get my hands on some Doonesbury anthologies from the '70s. It was harder than I thought. I have You're Never Too Old for Nuts and Berries in hand, and I'm awaiting the arrival of four more volumes. I also found an '80s collection at the library. Nuts and Berries was appropriately confusing--I guess that long digression into a woman apprenticing with Paul Revere was a bicentennial riff on women in the workforce, the storyline about all the assassination attempts on Gerald Ford was a bit risky, and if I hadn't recently read the Perlstein books, I may well have been wondering why they kept talking about salt--or, rather, SALT talks.
It was the '80s strips that triggered memories, though. Those panels about Oliver North reminded me of the time I took my pocket radio to the beach in Provincetown so I could listen to the Iran-Contra hearings. (You will be SHOCKED to hear that I did not have a holiday romance during that trip.) The Harmonic Convergence gags reminded me that I was at Michigan when that happened--and it was just as much of an anti-climax on the land as it was for Boopsie. (My memory was wrong about one thing, though: Google tells me the shigella outbreak happened the following year!)
Some of the recurring motifs were very much of their time--I guess we used to be super-worked up about insider trading, past lives, and a president's reluctance to appear at press conferences. Other things were shockingly familiar--references to Donald Trump, Cher, Joe Biden running for president, and presidential campaigns generally. The most "wait, did time stand still?" thing was a thread about how ridiculous the British House of Lords is--and although there has been a little tinkering around the edges, that ridiculous institution still stands. (And actually does good work sometimes.)
But was there anything about lesbians? Not exactly. Nuts and Berries did feature what must have been a pretty startling storyline in which a guy Joanie has a crush on tells her he's gay. And when Joanie's friend Ginny tells her guy Clyde that Joanie's going through something, he jumps to conclusions.
"Blondie's finally admittin' she's one of them chicks who don't like men," he concludes. "I'm telling you, Ginny, that's what this lib stuff leads to."
So maybe that collection did tell me something about the '70s after all.
RECOMMENDATIONS: I think I've read every Patty Hearst book, some multiple times--and a good chunk of the FBI files--so I feel qualified to opine. The best is Anyone's Daughter, by Shana Alexander. It's a kind of '70s writing I love--very personal, oversharing, slightly rude, and totally fascinating. It's pretty hard to find these days, though. The best in-print book is William Graebner's Patty's Got a Gun: Patricia Hearst in 1970s America, which is packed with smart ideas.
LISTEN TO ME: I was on two podcasts this week: On These Are Their Stories, the original and best Law & Order podcast, I joined Rebecca Lavoie and Kevin Flynn to talk about a creepy (surprise!) episode of SVU featuring ballerinas, hidden cameras, and conniving arts administrators. And on Working, I talked with opera and art-song composer Jake Heggie, who gives GREAT interview. I know next to nothing about classical music, but I know that classical musicians are amazing talkers. (See also Jamie Barton and Kathleen Kelly.)
Thank you for reading! If you enjoyed this newsletter and want to share it, or were forwarded this edition and want to subscribe, the link is https://buttondown.email/WhereAre. When my book is done and ready to be preordered, this is where I will harangue you about it, but that won't happen until 2024. Reply to this email to share any thoughts or ideas.