Looking Good: Difficulty at the Beginning

by Keith Maillard

A Globe and Mail Top 100 Pick of 2006 The Summer of Love is already like a distant memory; the psychedelic underground has turned in on itself. John Dupre has deserted a perfectly satisfying life as a student in Toronto, drawn back to the US by the need to make a difference in the Revolution. He's living in Boston under an assumed name because he s on the FBI s wanted list for draft evasion. His best friend is Tom Parker, an ex-GI turned righteous drug dealer. When John, Tom, and the militant feminist and Situationist Pam Zalman seize control of an underground newspaper and are put on the Weatherman hit list, there's really no place to hide they re wanted on all sides. It s the year of the Harvard Square riot, the invasion of Cambodia, and Kent State. Campuses across America are host to demonstrations and riots. Burning ROTC buildings has become an everyday pastime. Pam and John forge a relationship where they're struggling against sex roles. The Left is splintering into ever smaller and crazier micro-factions. And that s when things begin to get really weird . . . Looking Good is a masterfully crafted, meticulously reconstructed social history of the 60s counterculture and a searching examination of gender identity the magnificent, explosive climax to Difficulty at the Beginning.

440 pages, Paperback

First published September 10, 2006

About the author

Keith Maillard is the author of fifteen novels, one book of poetry, and two memoirs. He has won the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize and was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Literary Prize and the Governor General's Literary Awards. The Clarinet Polka was awarded the Creative Arts Prize by the Polish American Historical Association. Dementia Americana won the Gerald Lampert Award in 1995 for the Best First Book of Poetry Published in Canada.

Keith was born and raised in Wheeling, West Virginia, the inspiration for the fictional town of Raysburg which serves as the setting for many of his novels. He has been a musician, a contributor for CBC Radio, a freelance photographer, and a journalist. He teaches in the School of Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia.

Reviews

[Rico]

"Looking Good" is the longest and most surreal of the four books in Maillard's "Difficulty At The Beginning" series. Our hero, John Dupre -- [SPOILER ALERT] now a draft-dodging fugitive with an assumed name -- weaves his way into and out of warring revolutionary student organizations, figures out his own sexuality with the help of a militant feminist with an eating disorder, and endures an extended mental burnout triggered by a nightmarish acid trip. If any of that sounds stereotypical or overdramatic, it isn't handled that way. As always, reading these novels is like watching life unfold: Some of it weird and mysterious, some of it pointless, but always true. This one's tough to get through, with the main story frequently put on hold for multiple subplots, but persistence is rewarded. The series wraps up profoundly as you realize Maillard has done nothing less than illustrate how a whole country came apart at the seams.