What do you think?
Rate this book
Coda
As the sun slowly goes down over the Golden Gate Conservatory for Music, the young student Richard Matthews suddenly has the strange urge to run from campus. His decision leads him on a spiraling journey of self-discovery.
It is spring, 1971 in San Francisco. The city is a slowly-fading shadow of the bohemian playground that spawned the beat poets and the Haight-Ashbury scene. The San Francisco sound of Jazz Fusion and the lenient attitude towards sex and pornography attracts outsiders and the socially marginalized like a magnet.
It is into this cauldron of music, sex and culture that the eighteen year old Richard throws himself to begin his experience of life as an adult.
However, the experience begins with distress as Richard is mugged in the park and his prize possession, a flugelhorn is stolen. His quest to recover his horn and the memories it holds for him lead him on a hunt through the buzzing city night and to encounters with a colourful array of characters. From the mysterious old Jazzman, Milton, who claims to have seen the perpetrators of the crime against Richard to the prostitute with a degree in English literature, Lorraine, Richard is never quite sure who is genuinely trying to help him and who has more sinister motives.
Richard’s journey ultimately leads him to consider what it means to be an artist and if the nature of expression is valid when the content of expression is insincere. The young artist searches his past for evidence of sincere memories and emotions to express genuinely.
The repressed memories that Richard exorcises through this quest for self-expression shock him to his core.
It is spring, 1971 in San Francisco. The city is a slowly-fading shadow of the bohemian playground that spawned the beat poets and the Haight-Ashbury scene. The San Francisco sound of Jazz Fusion and the lenient attitude towards sex and pornography attracts outsiders and the socially marginalized like a magnet.
It is into this cauldron of music, sex and culture that the eighteen year old Richard throws himself to begin his experience of life as an adult.
However, the experience begins with distress as Richard is mugged in the park and his prize possession, a flugelhorn is stolen. His quest to recover his horn and the memories it holds for him lead him on a hunt through the buzzing city night and to encounters with a colourful array of characters. From the mysterious old Jazzman, Milton, who claims to have seen the perpetrators of the crime against Richard to the prostitute with a degree in English literature, Lorraine, Richard is never quite sure who is genuinely trying to help him and who has more sinister motives.
Richard’s journey ultimately leads him to consider what it means to be an artist and if the nature of expression is valid when the content of expression is insincere. The young artist searches his past for evidence of sincere memories and emotions to express genuinely.
The repressed memories that Richard exorcises through this quest for self-expression shock him to his core.
411 pages, Paperback
Published October 9, 2022
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
No one has reviewed this book yet.