Books in Brief

I Couldn’t Smoke the Grass on My Father’s Lawn, by Michael Chaplin (Putnam, $4.95). Just in case anyone’s interested, the lad with the decade’s most thoroughly exploited father problem has Sold Out. He’s shorn his shoulder- length locks and taken a nine-to- five; presumably, he and that bleary blonde are ensconced in a suburban semi-detached wherein they spoon o’nights on a hire- purchase couch before a merrily hissing gas grate. Shillings for the gas, alas, come from royalties from these wretchedly written, at least semi-ghosted memoirs. The book is a paltry pudding of beatnikisms, sentence fragments, syntactical enormities and pompous pronouncements on Life, Art, Truth, Reality, Pot, and other fundamental stuff. The philosophy, if such it can be called, is Orthodox Young Rebel; the over-all tone suggests a lobotomized Bennington girl Telling All to True Confessions. Typical Sentence: “Christ is okay. He had some great insights.” Another: “The inheritors of the language of Shakespeare sure have mangled up their pronunciation.” You’ll be able to buy this gem at Mar- boro’s for 59 cents next year. Don’t.

c. H. SIMONDS

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I Couldn’t Smoke the Grass on My Father’s Lawn, by Michael Chaplin (Putnam, $4.95). Just in case anyone’s interested, the lad with the decade’s most thoroughly exploited father problem has Sold Out. He’s shorn his shoulder- length locks and taken a nine-to- five; presumably, he and that bleary blonde are ensconced in a suburban semi-detached wherein they spoon o’nights on a hire- purchase couch before a merrily hissing gas grate. Shillings for the gas, alas, come from royalties from these wretchedly written, at least semi-ghosted memoirs. The book is a paltry pudding of beatnikisms, sentence fragments, syntactical enormities and pompous pronouncements on Life, Art, Truth, Reality, Pot, and other fundamental stuff. The philosophy, if such it can be called, is Orthodox Young Rebel; the over-all tone suggests a lobotomized Bennington girl Telling All to True Confessions. Typical Sentence: “Christ is okay. He had some great insights.” Another: “The inheritors of the language of Shakespeare sure have mangled up their pronunciation.” You’ll be able to buy this gem at Mar- boro’s for 59 cents next year. Don’t.

c. H. SIMONDS