Books in Canada
The ’60s have a special place in the mythology of the West, North America, and especially the United States. Much of that myth is simply fiction; peace and love didn’t make much progress in the post-Woodstock world, the dreams of the flower children got absorbed into Wall Street and Madison Avenue in the ’80s, and we haven’t seen much of them since.
Yet there is something to that old notion, that somewhere between the Beatles’ 1966 album Revolver (home of “Eleanor Rigby”), and Jimi Hendrix’s 1967 release of Are You Experienced (presided over by “Purple Haze”) some great shift happened, and all that came after was truly different from that which came before. The prosperity of the age meant that young men and women could wait to get a haircut and a job; cities began to pull even greater numbers of people in from the countryside; the modern electric guitar, popular since the 1950s, transformed itself from a backup instrument into a wailing soundtrack of freedom and possibility; the church lost its grip on the minds of the young; and the love that dared not speak its name started to dare.
While the ’60s may not be all they were cracked up to be, we have not seen such a significant shift in the make-up of Western society since then. Teens who lived through those years could rightly feel they were witnessing a break with the past bigger than anything that had been seen for decades, certainly bigger than anything experienced by the kids of the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90.
Rigby John Klusener, protagonist of Tom Spanbauer’s quirky coming of age novel, Now Is the Hour, is caught in this maelstrom of change. The year is (mostly) 1967, and Rigby John, growing up on an Idaho farm, has a mean father who doesn’t talk to him, a rabid Catholic mother, long-suffering, who drags him to church for an impromptu confession when she catches him masturbating (in front of the dog, no less), and an assortment of brutal schoolmates who don’t like strange kids who might be queer. Amidst this harsh world, Rigby John finds his tentative footing in the world, in the music, the books, the pot, the ideas, and eventually the sex of the 1960s.
Spanbauer has built up that shifting world with great skill. The backwoods Idaho town and Rigby John’s tense family relations are vivid, and Rigby John is convincing as a puzzled youth, with the humour of a survivor, headed unavoidably for a radical split from his past. One can’t help root for the kid as he negotiates the pitfalls of a brutal adolescence, although one that is nonetheless infused with the joy and wonder of becoming a man.
Spanbauer deftly mixes the mundane world of rural 1960s America with great tragedy and high comedy. Here Rigby John tells us about his baby brother, who dies after one hundred days: “One day I asked (my mother) to show me what was wrong with him. It was still winter when I asked, sometime within the first ten days of his one hundred days, after he got home from the hospital, before the time when the pigs got out, before he died in the spring, after the chores were done, and after school and before supper.”
At the centre of the book is Rigby John’s distant relationship with his father, evoked with matter-of-fact honesty and without melodrama: “Under the bright light in the kitchen, that moment, his black eyes Russky Gypsy. My body thick and heavy with his hate. I mean, really. Whatever the case may be, whoever your dad may be, your dad hating you doesn’t feel good.”
Yet despite the cruelty of his world, in some sense the ’60s win out, and so does Rigby John. Now is the Hour is a recipe book for escape, a successful jailbreak from 1966 Idaho, towards the promised freedom of 1967 San Francisco.
And therein lies the one great stumble of Spanbauer’s novel. The escape route seems a little easy, a little fanciful, a little too romantic for the hard world Rigby John inhabits. But maybe Tom Spanbauer can be forgiven for giving Rigby John Klusener something of a fairy tale ending, on the cool open road, heading to San Francisco, with a flower in his hair and love at his side. After what Rigby John survives, he deserves a happy ending.
Hugh McGuire (Books in Canada)
Yet there is something to that old notion, that somewhere between the Beatles’ 1966 album Revolver (home of “Eleanor Rigby”), and Jimi Hendrix’s 1967 release of Are You Experienced (presided over by “Purple Haze”) some great shift happened, and all that came after was truly different from that which came before. The prosperity of the age meant that young men and women could wait to get a haircut and a job; cities began to pull even greater numbers of people in from the countryside; the modern electric guitar, popular since the 1950s, transformed itself from a backup instrument into a wailing soundtrack of freedom and possibility; the church lost its grip on the minds of the young; and the love that dared not speak its name started to dare.
While the ’60s may not be all they were cracked up to be, we have not seen such a significant shift in the make-up of Western society since then. Teens who lived through those years could rightly feel they were witnessing a break with the past bigger than anything that had been seen for decades, certainly bigger than anything experienced by the kids of the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90.
Rigby John Klusener, protagonist of Tom Spanbauer’s quirky coming of age novel, Now Is the Hour, is caught in this maelstrom of change. The year is (mostly) 1967, and Rigby John, growing up on an Idaho farm, has a mean father who doesn’t talk to him, a rabid Catholic mother, long-suffering, who drags him to church for an impromptu confession when she catches him masturbating (in front of the dog, no less), and an assortment of brutal schoolmates who don’t like strange kids who might be queer. Amidst this harsh world, Rigby John finds his tentative footing in the world, in the music, the books, the pot, the ideas, and eventually the sex of the 1960s.
Spanbauer has built up that shifting world with great skill. The backwoods Idaho town and Rigby John’s tense family relations are vivid, and Rigby John is convincing as a puzzled youth, with the humour of a survivor, headed unavoidably for a radical split from his past. One can’t help root for the kid as he negotiates the pitfalls of a brutal adolescence, although one that is nonetheless infused with the joy and wonder of becoming a man.
Spanbauer deftly mixes the mundane world of rural 1960s America with great tragedy and high comedy. Here Rigby John tells us about his baby brother, who dies after one hundred days: “One day I asked (my mother) to show me what was wrong with him. It was still winter when I asked, sometime within the first ten days of his one hundred days, after he got home from the hospital, before the time when the pigs got out, before he died in the spring, after the chores were done, and after school and before supper.”
At the centre of the book is Rigby John’s distant relationship with his father, evoked with matter-of-fact honesty and without melodrama: “Under the bright light in the kitchen, that moment, his black eyes Russky Gypsy. My body thick and heavy with his hate. I mean, really. Whatever the case may be, whoever your dad may be, your dad hating you doesn’t feel good.”
Yet despite the cruelty of his world, in some sense the ’60s win out, and so does Rigby John. Now is the Hour is a recipe book for escape, a successful jailbreak from 1966 Idaho, towards the promised freedom of 1967 San Francisco.
And therein lies the one great stumble of Spanbauer’s novel. The escape route seems a little easy, a little fanciful, a little too romantic for the hard world Rigby John inhabits. But maybe Tom Spanbauer can be forgiven for giving Rigby John Klusener something of a fairy tale ending, on the cool open road, heading to San Francisco, with a flower in his hair and love at his side. After what Rigby John survives, he deserves a happy ending.
Hugh McGuire (Books in Canada)
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Spanbauer follows his well-received The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon with a risky assay into the traditional bildungsroman, with this straightforward but luminous tale of a country boy's self-liberation. In the summer of 1967, 17-year-old Rigby John Klusener is hitchhiking from his hometown of Pocatello, Idaho, to San Francisco to escape a life of religious, racial and sexual bigotry. He leaves behind a pregnant girlfriend, a hopelessly mystified mother, an embittered father and a sister trapped in a brutal marriage. As he waits for a ride out on the deserted highway, he winds the story back to his childhood, then virtually walks the reader through a life marked by hard farm work, Catholic guilt and the liberating passion of deep friendships formed with the most scandalously disreputable people of the community. From his first school-yard fight to first experiences with sex (of various sorts), cigarettes, alcohol, pot, jealousy and love, Rigby John's first person is at once reliable and highly ironic; we may know better, but he truly doesn't, and the distance is delicious. And his genuine astonishment at other people (great names: Allen "Puke" Price; Grandma Queep) keeps his telling edgy and warm, without allowing it to be sentimental. (May 15)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
*Starred Review* This sophisticated, funny, poignant, sexy coming-of-age novel is by the author of the well-received and continuously popular The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon (1991), which was his second novel. His new one, frankly, is even better. "The universe has always conspired to fuck me up," maintains teenage Rigby John Klusener, who, in the 1960s, lives with his parents and sister on an Idaho farm. How he learns otherwise--that sometimes life bestows pleasures and actual advancement--is the lesson of his seventeenth year and the plot construct of this lengthy but absolutely nimble narrative, related by Rigby himself. Rigby is bound and determined to break away from the bonds of his repressive home environment, first in the form and arms of a girlfriend, and then, far more profoundly, of the outrageous but bighearted George, who, although much older than Rigby, unlocks for him the splendor of true love. Rigby's storytelling voice is natural, warm, and positively addictive; the many pages of this breathtaking, romantic, and unpredictable novel fly past. Rarely does such a gripping story match with such a lovable character. Simply sit back and enjoy the lovely partnership. Brad Hooper
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
Starred Review. Spanbauer follows his well-received The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon with a risky assay into the traditional bildungsroman, with this straightforward but luminous tale of a country boy's self-liberation. In the summer of 1967, 17-year-old Rigby John Klusener is hitchhiking from his hometown of Pocatello, Idaho, to San Francisco to escape a life of religious, racial and sexual bigotry. He leaves behind a pregnant girlfriend, a hopelessly mystified mother, an embittered father and a sister trapped in a brutal marriage. As he waits for a ride out on the deserted highway, he winds the story back to his childhood, then virtually walks the reader through a life marked by hard farm work, Catholic guilt and the liberating passion of deep friendships formed with the most scandalously disreputable people of the community. From his first school-yard fight to first experiences with sex (of various sorts), cigarettes, alcohol, pot, jealousy and love, Rigby John's first person is at once reliable and highly ironic; we may know better, but he truly doesn't, and the distance is delicious. And his genuine astonishment at other people (great names: Allen "Puke" Price; Grandma Queep) keeps his telling edgy and warm, without allowing it to be sentimental. (Publishers Weekly )
*Starred Review* This sophisticated, funny, poignant, sexy coming-of-age novel is by the author of the well-received and continuously popular The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon (1991), which was his second novel. His new one, frankly, is even better. "The universe has always conspired to fuck me up," maintains teenage Rigby John Klusener, who, in the 1960s, lives with his parents and sister on an Idaho farm. How he learns otherwise--that sometimes life bestows pleasures and actual advancement--is the lesson of his seventeenth year and the plot construct of this lengthy but absolutely nimble narrative, related by Rigby himself. Rigby is bound and determined to break away from the bonds of his repressive home environment, first in the form and arms of a girlfriend, and then, far more profoundly, of the outrageous but bighearted George, who, although much older than Rigby, unlocks for him the splendor of true love. Rigby's storytelling voice is natural, warm, and positively addictive; the many pages of this breathtaking, romantic, and unpredictable novel fly past. Rarely does such a gripping story match with such a lovable character. Simply sit back and enjoy the lovely partnership. (Booklist -Brad Hooper )
*Starred Review* This sophisticated, funny, poignant, sexy coming-of-age novel is by the author of the well-received and continuously popular The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon (1991), which was his second novel. His new one, frankly, is even better. "The universe has always conspired to fuck me up," maintains teenage Rigby John Klusener, who, in the 1960s, lives with his parents and sister on an Idaho farm. How he learns otherwise--that sometimes life bestows pleasures and actual advancement--is the lesson of his seventeenth year and the plot construct of this lengthy but absolutely nimble narrative, related by Rigby himself. Rigby is bound and determined to break away from the bonds of his repressive home environment, first in the form and arms of a girlfriend, and then, far more profoundly, of the outrageous but bighearted George, who, although much older than Rigby, unlocks for him the splendor of true love. Rigby's storytelling voice is natural, warm, and positively addictive; the many pages of this breathtaking, romantic, and unpredictable novel fly past. Rarely does such a gripping story match with such a lovable character. Simply sit back and enjoy the lovely partnership. (Booklist -Brad Hooper )
Product Description
The year is 1967, and Rigby John Klusener, seventeen years old and finally leaving his home and family in Pocatello, Idaho, is on the highway with his thumb out and a flower behind his ear, headed for San Francisco. Now Is the Hour is the wondrous story of how Rigby John got to this point. It traces his gradual emancipation from the repressions of a strictly religious farming family and from the small-minded, bigoted community in which he has grown up during a time of explosive cultural change. Transforming this familiar journey from American Graffiti to On the Road into something rich and strange and hilarious is the persona of Rigby John himself. Intimately in touch with his fears, hesitantly awakening to his own sexuality, and palpably open to life's mysteries, Rigby John is a protagonist whom readers will fall in love with, root for, and be moved by. Now Is the Hour is a powerful, vastly entertaining story of self-awakening, of the complex bonds of family, and ultimately of America during a period of tremendous upheaval.
About the Author
TOM SPANBAUER is the author of the beloved classic The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon, winner of the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award for best fiction, and a dazzlingly accomplished novel, according to the Washington Post. His earlier novels are Faraway Places and In the City of Shy Hunters. He lives in Portland, Oregon.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Lonesome Traveler Parmesan cheese. My troubles all started with Parmesan cheese. And they ended with Parmesan cheese. My life up to now has been one big cheese cycle. The first grade of Saint Josephs School was the first Parmesan cheese incident. The last Parmesan cheese incident just happened, and what just happened is the reason why Im a free man out here on Highway 93, a flower in my hair, hitchhiking to San Francisco. Its all pretty clear now. Amazing how clear things can get at night in the desert. The moon, a big silver dollar, so much light theres a shadow of me across the pavement. A long shadow. My feet here on the gravel, my head all the way over there on the center line. George Serano told me once that you can tell how you feel by how your shadow looks. Tonight in my shadow theres something about my head and my shoulders, my arms too. The way my hair is sticking up, and my T-shirt on my biceps, the daisy I picked in Twin Falls poking out the side of my head. Something inside coming out that makes my shadow look, that makes me look, I dont know, full, I guess. Like this moon. Moons so bright I can see the lines in the palm of my hand. I can see my bloody, bit thumbnail. If I took my dick out, I could see every aspect of it. My ass too. I ought to just pull my pants down right here, one hundred and fifty miles north of Reno, Nevada, and show that big old moon my big old moon. Just my luck, some trucker would come along. Just my luck. And quiet. Quiet as church. Not Mass or Our Mother of Perpetual Help devotions, but quiet in the empty Saint Josephs Church. The quiet of the votive candle flame. The blue and red and yellow stained glass lying on the pew. Close your eyes and take a breath. What you smell is Catholic: oiled wood, beeswax, gold frankincense and myrrh. The deserts even more quiet. The perfectly still sound of everything alive. Even the pavement, its dark ribbon going over the edge of the horizon, is alive. The horizon too, slow, sloping flat, every now and then an outburst of lava rock making a jagged edge. Sagebrush a darker shade of silver than the moon. Close your eyes here and take a breath, what you smell is sagebrush and bitterroot, what you smell is everything thats possible. Two cigarettes ago, just as I sucked the yellow flame into the end of my cigarette, a coyote yelled out a big old lonesome, but not a sound since. Not even crickets or frogs. Just my tennis shoes scraping gravel. And my breath. Maybe there was a nuclear bomb, and now Im the only person who survived in the whole entire world. That might not be so bad. After seventeen years of breathing, I, Rigby John Klusener, do hereby declare there sure as hell are a few I could live without. Why else do you think Im out here on Highway 93, my thumb stuck out pointing to California? What are you, six years old, in the first grade? There I was, six years old. Sister Bertha had put me on the dumb side of the room. Over on the right side near th
