Mezcal
Bowden takes himself too seriously: "The sixties is a crucible . . . we are the song of the electric guitar." If you were thereyoung and footloose and vaguely radical in the 1960s and early '70sthis lyrical but flat account of his wanderings may strike a chord. Bowden, who wrote Blue Desert and edits Tucson's City Magazine , tends to dramatize himself here in a way that Charles Bukowski might get away with, but which only makes him sound like a jaded ex-hippie. A fugitive not certain of what he's fleeing, Bowden backpacks in the Southwestern desert, the Wisconsin woods, the Berkshires in Massachusetts. The obligatory period references are hereantiwar protests, drugs, the Rolling Stones' "Street Fighting Man"but they are an empty assemblage of signposts. When Bowden contrasts Midwestern farm communities of his boyhood with the Sunbelt's "instant cities" exuding raw, ugly energy, he rises to pop sociology.Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.