Revolutionaries

February 1, 2019
A grown-up child of the 1960s looks back in anger, seasoned with retroactive awe, at his mercurial father, a legendary activist and counterculture icon.It will be all but impossible for readers of a certain age to wander far into this elegiac monologue about family upheaval, political tumult, and ruined hopes without thinking of Yippie co-founder Abbie Hoffman (1936-1989), who challenged the political establishment in the '60s with anarchic humor, incendiary rhetoric, and heedless mischief. Most (if not quite all) of the things that happen in this novel to the irrepressible Lenny Snyder, from his glory days as street-level activist and counterculture superstar to his early-1970s period on the run from drug-related criminal charges, happened in real life to Hoffman. Playwright Furst, who displayed wit and empathy dealing with youthful protagonists in Short People (2003) and The Sabotage Café (2007), filters Lenny's life through the childhood reminiscences of his grown-up son, Fred, short for "Freedom," who was literally conceived by Lenny and his wife, Suzy, on the grounds of Central Park's Sheep Meadow minutes after they were married in front of "four thousand witnesses tripping on acid and a photographer from the Associated Press." At first, Fred, along with everybody in Lenny's orbit, is enthralled with his dad's "cracked-whip cackle," rapid-fire patter, and physical courage. But the older Fred gets, the more bewildered he is by Lenny's mood swings and the verbal abuse and offhand neglect he visits upon those closest to him, whether it's Fred's mother, the novel's most heartbreaking character, or folk singer Phil Ochs, who's a very close second as he always shows up to help, despite his estrangement from Lenny and his own physical and psychological decline, wherever Suzy and Fred are struggling to live after Lenny's deep dive into the underground. Other real-life characters come into view, including Allen Ginsberg, William Kunstler, and Jerry Rubin, though Rubin's thinly disguised persona appears under the name Sy Neuman. But what raises this book far above being a roman à clef are the vivid scenes of Fred trying to have a normal childhood in gray, grimy Nixon-era New York City and of him and his mother finding solace with each other as they watch Lenny drift away from them, literally and figuratively.A haunting vision of post-'60s malaise whose narrator somehow retains his humor, compassion, and even optimism in the wake of the most crushing disillusionment.

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Starred review from February 25, 2019
This roman à clef from Furst (The Sabotage Café) about America’s 1960s protest era and the speed with which its leaders and their causes slipped into obsolescence is a heartfelt meditation on how quickly history outruns political and social ideals. Its principal character is Lenny Snyder, a counterculture gadfly whose personality echoes Abbie Hoffman and whose outrageous activist antics, related in the whirlwind opening chapters, comprise a potted history of the era’s most famous social justice protests. The novel’s narrator is Lenny’s son, Freedom, aka Freddy, whom Lenny sometimes used as a “tyke revolutionary” prop in his protests. Freddy is just seven when Lenny, facing a drug rap, disappears, and most of the story follows Freddy and his mother, Suzy, as they try to adjust to a world that has moved on without them and Lenny, often in the company of the poignantly depicted real-life folksinger Phil Ochs, whose decline and suicide in the 1970s make him one of the era’s most tragic casualties. Furst modulates movingly between Freddy’s childhood memories of the father whom he admired and his adult perspective on how cruel and selfishly opportunistic Lenny could be. Furst’s novel and its themes will resonate with readers regardless of whether they lived through its times.

April 1, 2019
Freedom Fred Snyder wants to set the record straight about his infamous father, Lenny, a fictional Abbie Hoffman-like figure. In this faux memoir, Furst (The Sabotage Cafe, 2007) explores the collateral damage resulting from life with a 1960s revolutionary. Lenny begins as a Freedom Rider and charismatic movement leader, but ends up as a sad sack scoundrel. Much of the action takes place in Greenwich Village and the streets of New York, where Fred develops his own identity as his mom, Suzy, struggles to make ends meet. There are also thrilling adventures spent with Lenny, who tries to prepare him to be a fighter against the system. Then there is the sorrow of visiting his father while he is in jail awaiting trial. Fred tries to make sense of his childhood memories, the interactions with adults who surrounded his family, and the collection of correspondence between his parents now in his possession. Sadly, Fred and Suzy both pay a high price for loving Lenny, who, for much of the novel, is running from the law and his past.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)

March 1, 2019

Only child of Sixties countercultural leader Lenny Snyder, Fred (initially named Freedom) recalls a difficult upbringing filled with marches and pranks, wild Lenny devotees, and a father who preaches love but practices instinctive meanness with his family. From Furst, a Michener fellow and Nelson Algren Award winner, author of the acclaimed story collection Short People and the multi-best-booked debut novel The Sabotage Cafe.

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