Reviews ReviewsMore pertinent than Salinger's A CATCHER IN THE RYE. More optimistic than Wolfe's LOOK HOMEWARD, ANGEL. More realistically humorous than Bradford's RED SKY AT MORNING. Michael Lund has taken a frank look at the coming of age sexual anxiety of baby boomers as we tripped through the late 1950's and early 1960's in smalltown mid-America. This semi-autobiographical first novel by Lund is crafted with sympathy and candor. When you finish GROWING UP you will look forward to a next installment of the lives of youthful Michael Landon, Marcia Terrell, and Cathy Williams. They have so much life in them, so much promise, and some hope of incorporating a healthy sexual identity into the culture of the first post-WWII generation.
Salinger's A CATCHER IN THE RYE is so focused on the experience of one lonely and confused youth that it fails to get in touch with my experience and view of reality. Really, why would anyone choose to read it? One wonders who keeps placing this on required reading lists anyway. Lund draws on his own (rather normal) experience in a compact neighborhood of children of the men and women who returned from WWII and settled down to lives of relative peace and prosperity. Information about sex was not easily obtained and that which was available was not very clear. Teenagers in 1960 did not have many resources--certainly not the new millennium bombardment of sexually explicit television, movies and magazines of today. In 1960 neither the churches nor the schools provided the frank and informative sex education of today and parents were not so adept as parents of today. Rather than reading Salinger and asking "Why?" just read Lund and say, "Okay, I get the idea."
Wolfe's Eugene is surrounded by parents, siblings, and women (young
and not so young) who are so burdened with unhealthy views of life that
Eugene is going to be screwed up--we just don't know when his crazy world
is going to finally crash. Eugene is not real. He is not believable
enough to make me care about what will happen to him next.
His life is more bizarre than encouraging or optimistic. Lund's
main character, Landon, on the other hand, is more straight forward, easier
to identify with, and much more hopeful. Perhaps I am reading more
into Landon than the story justifies because I knew Michael Lund as a youth
and know him now to be a thoughtful and accomplished college teacher.
Having made that disclaimer, I offer you Mark Landon as a more representative
character of America's youth in the 50's than Eugene was of the second
decade of last century. Eugene is just too screwed up to care about but
one wants to pat Landon on the back and help him along.
Bradford did a masterful job in RED SKY AT MORNING at presenting likable
characters through episodes of humor--both situational humor and artful
use of dialog. How can one not fall in love with the sharp and sassy
Marsha? Lund's characters are composites of real kids in a real neighborhood.
Because many of the events described in GROWING UP happened much as Lund
tells in his story, you will acknowledge that truth and believe the tale
that he is telling. The discomfort of youth with the opposite sex
is worth watching up close with Lund because he handles it gently and fairly.
It is not all rosy but it is more frank and quite real.
Finally, there is a chapter that stands out to me as the finest example
of Lund as a craftsman. Chapter II of Part Five: On the Town is the story
of the delivery of a small town daily newspaper by adolescent and early
teen newspaper boys. They pick up the newspaper weekdays after school
as it comes off the press and deliver it to businesses and residences all
over this small town. Lund's description of the holding room of the
delivery boys, the bag and book, and the method of folding
the sixteen-page edition like a rectangular frisbee is truly wonderful.
His description is so careful and precise that you can see in your mind
the delivery boy doing exactly what they have been doing for decades.
Read it and cheer.
Here is the bottom line. If you want to impress your literature teacher, read Salinger and Wolfe. If you want to read something fresh and fun, read RED SKY AT MORNING and GROWING UP ON ROUTE 66. You will be pleased with your choice.
Larry Parks--Schoolmate and friend of Dr. Lund during their youth, now a trial lawyer in Texas.
"The novel is in the rich tradition of the American novel of stories
of initiation, or coming-of-age. The opening chapters recall Mark
Twain's Huck Finn, although instead of Huck and Tom Sawyer
planning a pirates' raid on a Sunday school outing, Mark Landon, his semi-steady
girl friend Marcia Terrell and five other 'Circle Children' start out on
a 'Great Expedition' into the woods west of town . . . . But make no mistake:
Route 66 is clearly an original!"
"Mike Lund has assembled a wonderful cast of main and supporting characters in this first novel . . . "
"Lund's novel is a process of discovery--discovery of self, of others admired or feared, of relationships among peers and family members, or between older and younger boys and girls. It is also about acceptance of responsibility, recognition of limitations, and a discovery that many people whom we most admire when we are young and innocent actually possess the same character flaws we discover in ourselves."
"As Ishmael says in Moby Dick, 'me thinks' we will see more of Mark in the not-too-distant future, as Mike Lund moves beyond the boyhood of Growing Up on Route 66."
The cover picture is composited from Royalty-free photo objects from
Hemera
Technologies and an original photograph by Donna Lea of Misty Owl,
in riesel, Texas. See more of Donna's work at mistyowl.com
The book also includes a photograph of the Chain
of Rocks Bridge with kind permission of Jim
Potts
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ISBN: 1-888725-31-1 Growing
Up on Route 66--a novel by Michael Lund (BeachHouse Books) $14.95
ISBN: 1-888725-45-1 MacroPrintBooks Edition Growing
Up on Route 66--a novel by Michael Lund (BeachHouse Books) $24.95
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