Alan Mark Train

The Psychedelic Slacker: Felix Skidwell and the Pothead's Stone Alan Mark Train

A book about someone who grew up a little too late for the Sixties but then couldn't get over them... The restless rueful protagonist and narrator, Felix Skidwell, wants to, and does, escape from Minnesota, the 1970s and his conservative roots. The result is a poignant, but fitful, episodical tale that stretches from the virtual eve of an Upper Midwest high school graduation and a mind-blowing Des Moines Iowa Open Air Grateful Dead concert through programming artsy game software for, and a brief association with, Sixties guru Timothy O'Berry in Southern California. A year or so into his new life in California, Felix takes a few moments to reflect back while socializing at a posh Orange County barbeque. Check out ZZDave Menacing BBQ, prose set to music by no less than his high school buddy from the Midwest, Lonesome Dave Wasted. A continually entertaining, often uproarious, coming-of-age story filled with hope and longing, "Go west, young man," it is neither the malaise of being frozen permanently into the tundra or that of sinking helplessly into the creosote pit.