The Season of the Witch

by James Leo Herlihy

SHIPS FROM CALIFORNIA!!

Genres: Fiction, Realistic Fiction, Historical Fiction

384 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1971

About the author

James Leo Herlihy was an American novelist, playwright and actor best known for his novel Midnight Cowboy, one of three of his works adapted for cinema. He attended Black Mountain College in North Carolina and was a friend of Tennessee Williams who became his mentor.

Reviews

[Troy Alexander · Rating 3 out of 5]

James Leo Herlihy’s most well-known novel is Midnight Cowboy (1965), which is better known in its 1969 film version. Like Midnight Cowboy, Herlihy’s 1971 novel, The Season of the Witch is also about someone from the Midwest who moves to New York in search of a new life. It is fall 1969 and seventeen-year-old Gloria Random and her best friend John McFadden, a gay guy who has just been drafted to serve in Vietnam, decide to run away from their homes in Detroit and try their luck going underground in New York. Gloria also knows that her birth father, who she has never met, is teaching at one of the colleges in New York and is determined to find him.

Gloria and John (who change their names to Witch and Roy) find themselves taken into a large share house full of hippies from all walks for life. Everyone in the house takes drugs, chant, get naked, hold hands, listen to the Electric Prunes and Donovan while high, experiment with free love, and wax lyrically trying to solve the world’s many problems.

The thing that grated me most about this book is the language; that 1960’s hippy lingo like “dig it”, “groovy”, and “bad trip”. If someone wrote a book like this now trying to emulate people speaking this way, it would be unbearable but the fact that this was written in 1971 somehow makes it slightly less irritating – I guess some people did actually talk like that.

It wasn’t that I disliked this book, but reading it was like being completely straight and sober at a party where everyone had gotten really high around me. I tried to enjoy myself and some of the conversation was entertaining and interesting, but after a while it all became a little tedious.

[Jozee · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this book in a very classic movie "this is how I found my favorite book" way - shopping in a flea market one day, I picked the book up because its plain black cover interested me. I also bought several other books that day, and I thought, hey, I might actually like some of these and began reading the one on top, which happened to be this book. Wonderful novel, it truly embodies the feeling of living in NYC in 1969 - I felt free, and like the possibilities were endless, yet constantly reminded of the troubles of the "real world" Couldn't have been written any better.

[Lillian · Rating 4 out of 5]

30+ years later I am still quoting from this book, about a young woman in search of her birth father during the turbulent late 1960's. It really seemed to capture the spirit of the times and was even better than Midnight Cowboy (by the same author.)

[Joshua Buhs · Rating 4 out of 5]

Curious.

I had no expectations when I started this book, having not heard of it or the author before. After a few pages, I was a little worried it would turn into some old guys condescending view of the hippies written at the very moment when hippies were starting to become big cultural stars. The book is written as a series of journal entries composed by Gloria (who renames herself Witch in the course of the story) and the language is so earnest, Gloria and her friend, the awkward gay teen boy John (who renames himself Roy), are, at first, so naive, so earnest, so quick to affirm each other that it seems like a set up: as though the author is, with us, winking at their silliness.

But Herlihy takes a more difficult path. He explores the characters, unfolding their layers, sending them out into a world that is both dangerous _and_ accepting. Witch and Roy run away from their suburban Detroit homes and end up in New York where, after some hard encounters, they find a soft place to land: a communal home supported by a rich psychoanalyst who is also turned on--in one of the book's recurrent phrases, meaning hip to the New Age ideas espoused by the hippies. He is married, but the couple is also sleeping with another of the women in the house. They all smoke pot and drop acid--but nothing harder. They worry about how to make rules in their future utopia--a place that should be free from rules, and also are anxious about how to live now. What to do when one of their housemates turns out to be a speed freak and dealer? Throw him out? Love him anyway?

That worry is part of the reason that the book works: the characters are not stock hippies, but engaged, thinking, feeling, changing people. The other reason--the biggest reason--is that Witch's voice rings so true. She can be ironic, ruthlessly dissecting her own motivations, as well as those of others around her, always on the hunt for hypocrisy--but then, having identified it, looking for ways past it.

She's also on a dangerous quest. She's looking for the father who abandoned her, and, to her mind represents her true lineage: her mother married wealthy and has given herself to the plastic culture of twentieth-century America. Her father is a communist professor in New York. He can be a bit of a stereotype in the story, an old guard communist confused by the new peace-and-love generation, but he does try, and he provides some comic relief. Once she finds him, Witch's quest becomes even more dangerous: she plans to sleep with him.

The future, she imagines on an acid trip, will be bright and perfect. But it isn't. Rather than sleep with her father, she confesses their blood relations, which understandably sends him for a loop. She returns to her mother, and the conclusion of their relationship is simple, stark, and has none of the book's earlier sentimentality: they decide to give up on one another.

The book itself is probably a little too long, but Witch's voice is so assured that it's not much of an issue. She's a developing writer, and the book shows the growing confidence and skill in her craft. At the same time, like so many other 20th-century novels, Season of the Witch becomes a book about the act of writing, and whether it amounts to anything, especially compared to the actual living of life, and experiencing of its highs--both chemically-induced and otherwise.

[Marne Wilson · Rating 5 out of 5]

After reading Midnight Cowboy and wondering what else the author had written, I came across this little gem in my library's storage facility. It is definitely a novel of its time, documenting the flower power era of the late 60's from the point of view of a teenage runaway. And yet there is also something about it that is timeless. It reads like the kind of really deep, really insightful young adult novel that doesn't get written so much anymore. (I don't recommend giving it to an actual teenage girl of 2014, however, unless you are willing to explain a lot!) I don't have any idea how Herlihy got so deeply inside the head of a teenage girl, but I identified with the main character completely. It's too bad that this book has been overshadowed by Herlihy's earlier more famous work, since I feel this is a much more successful novel in many ways.

[Scott · Rating 5 out of 5]

I first came across this book at a laundromat in college and while waiting for the whites to dry, picked it up, became glued, and ended up folding it carefully into my laundry bag to finish at home. I have never read Herlihy's Midnight Cowboy but do have it on my "to-read" list. If it is anything like this first person narrative of 60's exploits, I am going to be in engossed. The voice of this self-professed teen revolutionary is truly a voice we all once had. Her "full-circle" journey is jammed packed with all sorts of social nuances that are not just specific to the 60's.

[Sophy H · Rating 2 out of 5]

So I haven't actually finished this but I'm skimming through to the end.

I absolutely loved Midnight Cowboy by James Herlihy so I was eagerly anticipating this book of his. Wow, what a complete disappointment.

The writing feels juvenile and immature. I know Gloria/Witch the protagonist is supposed to be 17 but it reads like a 12 or 13 year old's thoughts. The constant references to astrology are annoying (he's a Capricorn with moon rising in Leo, she's a Pisces with Aquarius tendencies, he's a Cancer with a hint of Sagittarius!!) Just no. The story is pretty loose and the inner monologue of Witch soon becomes repetitive and boring. Unlike Midnight Cowboy, this book hasn't aged well at all. It feels flimsy, whimsical and half-baked.

Never mind.

2 stars.

[patty · Rating 4 out of 5]

How did I miss this book back when I was a teenager?

[Kira FlowerChild · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was published in 1971, the year I graduated high school and pretty much the year I became a full-fledged hippie. I don't know why I have put off reading it so long. I guess in part it was a fear of disappointment. And honestly, my experiences were so very different from Gloria's, the main character's (who renames herself Witch) that although I could relate to most of the events in the book, they were quite different from my life. Gloria's journal covers mostly her experiences in 1969 when she was 16 years old, which is the same age I was that year. However, Gloria and her best friend, John (renamed Roy) run away to New York City because his draft number came up and he didn't want to go to Vietnam, so he decided to go underground.

Their initial adventures in the city are pretty grim, until they find a home in a sort of urban commune. There are a variety of characters there, and some of the things they do, like smoking marijuana and dropping acid, are things that I and my friends did, too. I never dropped acid, I knew my brain was already too messed up and I was afraid acid would send me over the edge. But marijuana was a mellow high. And we, too, believed that if people "turned on" (learned to get high) and listened to the message of the music ["love your brother (and sister)"], if people's eyes were just opened to the power of love, there would truly be peace on Earth. Yes, folks, we actually believed that, until Watergate revealed how corrupt and unscrupulous our leaders - even here in the United States! - actually were. There are many opinions about when the "Sixties" actually ended. For me, it was Watergate, and the realization that "the establishment," as we called it, was far more corrupt than most of us could have imagined.

It was amusing and a little sad to read the section where Witch envisions a future utopia where everyone lives in peace and harmony. I think during that period of time (before Watergate) some of us who were more naive (like me) actually thought it might be possible. And look where we are today.

Some of the narrative was a bit cringe-inducing, especially when the various members of the group get into political and sociological discussions. The thing to remember is, despite the assassinations of the Kennedys and Martin Luther King, despite the devastation of the Vietnam War, despite the violence involved in the Civil Rights movement, people did honestly have hope for a better world then. Some people have that hope now and are fighting for it, but things are not as clear-cut now as they seemed back then.

I really didn't see why Gloria felt the need to go back and try to make peace with her mother. Perhaps because that was not my experience. Once I left home, I went back to visit, but I never expected my parents to understand my way of thinking. I certainly didn't discuss my lifestyle. It would have horrified them. I thought the last line of the book was overly sentimental: I just saw a squirrel I used to know, but I'm not sure he recognized me. I realize this is supposed to represent the changes Gloria has gone through, but I think the author could have found a better metaphor.

I would recommend this book both to people who were in their teens and early twenties at the time it was published, and to people who want to get an idea of what it was like to live through the Sixties and early Seventies and be a part of the hippie culture. This book doesn't represent everyone, but it gives a good general idea.

[Jk105 · Rating 2 out of 5]

I recently read James Leo Hurlihy’s “Midnight Cowboy”, which made this native New Yorker melancholy for my early teens in late ‘Sixties in my hometown. Not only did Herilihy capture that period in NYC, but he deftly portrayed down on their luck characters trying to emotionally connect with fellow humans.

So I had high hopes for enjoying The Season of the Witch, taking place in 1969, same city locale, with two characters who are runaways living the Counter Culture life in downtown Manhattan. I was disappointed.
Even as the characters in Midnight Cowboy were hustlers and rather unsavory, they were compelling to read, their humanity brought to life on the page. No so here. The hippies in this novel are simplistic dolts who spout silly slogans and spend all day laying around their rundown apartment building either dropping drugs or crashing from their highs. I forgot how naive and self centered this “younger generation” actually behaved. I now remember—and I’m not melancholy about that scene. They really thought chanting love slogans from their rooftops would create a revolution. They romanticized poverty, that is, until as we now know, living in squalor became tedious (or dangerous) and many of them became the ‘Seventies’ Yuppies, many voting for Ronald Reagan. It is not the author’s fault that this story doesn’t age well, given he wrote it in 1972. In fairness, he doesn’t necessarily endorse gobbling up LSD as a revolutionary act. But today we do know the Counter Culture created some fashion and memorable pop music, but was a repellant lifestyle. And there is nothing in the writing, or poor character development to make us feel charmed by these naive fools.

One last complaint. The book is saturated with hippie lingo I long forgot. Almost every paragraph includes “groovy”, “dig it” and others that hit your eyes like napalm. It makes for unpleasant reading.

[Solace Winter · Rating 4 out of 5]

I honestly have a hard time explaining why I enjoyed this novel. There should have been so much about it that made me go, “What am I reading?” Is this a book about politics, marijuana, incest, government, teenagers, utopia, or the insanity of one girl? There was so much this book did an excellent job of explaining without feeling like you needed to choke on details.

Witch, the name the main character takes on when she runs away from home, tells the whole novel from her point of view as she writers it in her diary. She and her best friend John escape to New York after he’s received his draft letter in September of 1969. In New York they meet people like them, against the war but pro smoking marijuana, and talk. The whole novel is a lot of discussions between people and their thoughts and what they believe a perfect society would be. Meanwhile, Witch finds her father and tries to get the communist to join her side of thinking.

The ending is disappointing, there is no resolution to anything really, but at the same time it completely works for the novel. The novel was never about a hard plot that had a clear beginning, middle, and an end. The novel was about Witch and how her interactions with others affected her thoughts and process. Written in 1971, the novel is great insight into what some were thinking during the war though it is still a fictitious and to be taken with a grain of salt.

Reasons to Read:

- Excellent storytelling from a high 17-year-old character that keeps in character rather than giving voice to Herlihy

- You enjoy a little bit of history through the eyes of cloud smoke

- You enjoy older novels

Reasons Not To Read:

- Incest becomes a major plot point

- The characters aren’t all that sympathetic

- No Resolution in the end

[Sharon Robinson · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a 12 or 13 year old, this book had a HUGE effect on me. Revealed a world I didn't know existed.

Being born in 1960 I experienced “ The Sixties” from the sidelines. I knew something really important was happening, and that I would never be a part of it. Reading this book took me there and explained it all.

It may not be (okay certainly isn’t) the best novel ever written but in terms of Books that Influenced Me it is unparalleled. I can still recall the feel of the library hardcover with the cellophane-wrapped jacket, that picture, the feel if it in my hands as I read. The worry that my parents might find out what I was reading.

I have always lamented that I was just a little too young to have been part of that generation, but who knows, I might not have survived. This book showed me that reading could take me to places and times I’d never otherwise experience.

[Connie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I re-read this book from 1972 that chronicles the lives of Gloria and John...teenaged hippies. Gloria is an earth-mother-wanna-be, and John is avoiding the draft. Mr. Herlihy writes this book as if he's lived this life of peace, love, drugs, and revolution. Filled with believable characters and events. I was surprised to realize at the end of the book that the story covers only a two month time span. If you want to live through the times of the Vietnam War, Timothy Leary, and Abbie Hoffman this is a great read. Gives one a chance to re-live those times or become immersed in that time and culture as a learning experience!

[John Jackson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read the last half of this book in one sitting...I think that marks it as a good read. I enjoyed it. It is very much a YA book in vocabulary and style, though the subject matter does lean a little more towards the adults, not much but a little. I thought it captured the naivety of youth perfectly. Sadly, I thought it was a little optimistic. The poor girl in the story would have probably been chewed up by the cruel world. I'm glad she wasn't. She's extremely likeable, so why not give her the benefit of a moderately happy life?

[Jenny Michelson · Rating 3 out of 5]

I just reread this book recently. It's an idealistic view of the late 1960's in New York. Gloria/Witch is searching for the father she never knew. Having not being born till after the 60's I have a hard time finding the characters believable and find most of them to be shallow. I think that the characters lack depth. I read this very quickly and for a mindless read I would revisit this in a couple of years.

[Karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this book long ago, like when I was 11 or 12. Back then I thought it was very daring and kind of frightening. Now I read it and suspect that a good deal of it is intended as spoof. Either way, it's a fun read -- although I was a little taken aback by the incesty plot twist in the last third of the book. I'd forgotten that part. Icky!

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am one of the many who read this book at a very young age.
I think it was the summer that I was 13. My parents had just divorced and I was spending a week at a beach house on Fire Island with my Dad.
I found this book at the house and became totally imersed in it.
I remember feeling that when I was old enough, I wanted to be like Witch and live in NYC, and I did.

[Rhonda Richoux · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was the book I read a few months after On The Road by Kerouac, and a few months later, I hit the road to meet new people and see America by living wherever my thumb took me. Very influential on a 19 year old girl. Now I'm 59, and still recall this book with great fondness.

[Katie · Rating 1 out of 5]

Couldn't finish, not into the drug culture, just found the characters brats.

[Megan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book and liked seeing what it might have been like to be a runaway to the 1960s counterculture scene.

[Mari · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was given to me while I was on the road traveling & living out of my backpack. I definitely related to Gloria. Had it been 1969 for me at 18, I know I'd be in her shoes!

[Giselle · Rating 2 out of 5]

Midnight Cowboy was so great, I expected Season of Witch to be at least readable. So far it's the worst hippie-sploitation I've ever subjected myself to. I don't think I can get through it.

[Christina · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted this hippie girl to have more fun and more sex just not with her father. Time in the book equaled weeks but the story felt like it need months.

[K · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this book because it takes you away. I felt like I was transported back in time and experiencing what this little lady was going through.

The book is set up like mock diary entries by a teenage hippie growing up in 1969. It covers her travels away from home in New York as she tries to find her long lost birth father. Along the way she meets some friends and makes some mistakes but grows from it.

The book does a perfect job encapsulating what it’s like to be an overtly trusting teenager, how it’s important to trust others but be honest with them, and how the world really hasn’t changed much as this book ages. The book covers issues such as communism, the Vietnam war, draft dodging; while also juggling drug issues and sexual topics.

Some readers might shy away from the ending plot where Witch realizes she has sexual feelings for her would-be dad, he kisses her and wants to “bed” her but she gets scared and tells him that she is really his daughter, he gets angry and tells her to leave. I thought this was a pretty good resolution because it shows that Witch doesn’t know how to feel about others and often just sexualizes men in general. She toyed with the idea but when it came down to it she became scared of him and wanted a father figure that she couldn’t have. She escapes to Canada with her friends but realizes that the long journey of her trying to find herself isn’t quite going as she planned and eventually returns home to her mother in Michigan (after being away for about a month).

Her mother and her make up and and come to an understanding that they can’t change each other. We don’t hear more about Witch’s friends or her birth father, it ends with her contemplating life on a teeter totter but writing about a squirrel; hinting that life has its ups and downs and that you can easily be distracted from yourself.

It’s a pretty melancholy and bittersweet tale about wanting to keep your youth, understanding that you must grow old, understanding that the country you live in is flawed, and understanding that your parents are only human. With some good natured humor from 1969.

The book becomes pretty heavy-handed at times when it discusses the nature of war, capitalism, sexuality, and the many movements going on in the 1960s. I wouldn’t say this is a bad thing but it’s hard to believe that a teenager would accurately capture it all perfectly.

I enjoyed the references to music and the prices of things, it really cemented in the teenager feel and the 1960s vibe. I liked all characters did have morals, her hippie commune house kicked out one of their members for attempting to deal meth for example. They stated that the family member could be allowed back in if they got clean (The family member didn’t return and they believe he was murdered). When Witch tried to sort her sexual feelings towards her father, her friends tried not to be judgmental but were encouraging her to pick the proper moral choice and how she didn’t seem happy about the feelings in general.

I liked how this book was very open about people in general, for the time it was written in it was kind towards it’s gay characters and characters of color. Other times, not so much as characters did hold prejudice but at least it was fitting to the time period and wasn’t grating.

All in all, a fun read if you want to just disappear for a little while into a book.

—

“Maturity arrives at the moment you stop trying to guess what will happen next. You just know that whatever it is, you will get through it somehow.”

“Be yourself, no one can ever tell you you’re doing it wrong.”

“We’re living in the world’s most beautiful day. If we’re more aware of the darkness than ever before, it’s because there’s more light penetrating it in more places.”

“If you love your job and working so much, then why are you so excited to retire?”

“ being in love isn’t ever really loving, it’s just wanting. And it isn’t any good. Its all aching and misery.”

“Whatever I do should make me feel good about being me.”

[L.V. Sage · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found a first edition hardback copy of this book at an estate sale recently. My intention was to try and sell it in my vintage Etsy store but after finding out that it wasn't worth much I decided to keep it and read it. Why not? It looked very interesting to me-the era (1969) with its drug experimentation, free love, revolution talk, etc was right up my alley. My own trilogy of novels begins in San Francisco in 1964 so I was interested to read another novel set in this time period and especially one that was written so close to the actual time period (1971).
Wow, is this book ever dated! Let's just get that out of the way right off. Now that that is established the story is quite interesting: a seventeen-year old girl, Gloria, leaves her home in Michigan with her best friend, John, who is not only a draft dodger but gay, which is not common for the time the book was written. She is interested in finding her real father who is supposed to be living in New York, so off they go. The usual antics proceed-drug use, meeting shady characters, finding a commune that takes them in, free love, nudity, revolutionary talk, etc. However, all of this is told by Gloria (who has changed her name to Witch-it makes a bit more sense when you read the book. John is now known as Roy) through the writings and musings in her journal or diary. I absolutely loved that concept because the author, James Leo Herlihy of "Midnight Cowboy" fame, writes so very convincingly as a young and VERY confused girl who vacillates between being supremely happy to terribly depressed; convinced about revolutionary ideas and then writing them off; loving everyone and then wanting isolation and constantly questioning nearly every move and thought she has. I found it very realistic and sweet.
The one subject that I found to be a bit disturbing was Gloria's sexual attraction to her father, Hank. At first she is merely curious about him but once she gets to know him (without revealing her identity to him) and getting this very uptight college teacher to hang out with her commune friends she begins to do what women so often do-want to change him and comfort him, to love him and take care of him. By this point he is very attracted to her and makes that quite clear and she is swept off her feet. Thankfully, she decides against going through with having sex with him (after talking to several people about it, most of which egg her on!) and at the eleventh hour reveals her identity to him, which of course utterly ruins him.
After a short trek to Canada where Roy can finally live out his life as John, she decides to return home to her mother in Detroit. Her mother and Gloria's relationship with her is another story entirely, which is fleshed out a lot in her journals. The mother-daughter, father-daughter fixation is very evident throughout this book and it's clear that Herlihy has some interest in the hang-ups these relationships give people. Here again, the book shows its age.
Overall, it's an interesting period piece and I did enjoy most of it.

[Adelaide · Rating 3 out of 5]

Overall I really liked the insight into the 1960’s counterculture scene that this books provides. I didn’t know what to expect, but mostly it was an enjoyable read. The references of a lot of important figures and events that were occurring in 1969 and before was what truly made Season of the Witch.

Although there was a lot of good things, the introduction of the subplot with Witch and her father genuinely made things quite uncomfortable going into the end of the book. The characters were fun, but not very well developed, even Witch. It’s a very easy read, and the history aspect is what really made it worth picking up.

[billibob · Rating 4 out of 5]

Absolutely loved it. Witch/Gloria is a tender character's whose journey in the matter of who am I ? and what is life? never feels out-dated. I loved witch's maturity, the revolving relationships around her and just looking at the world through her eyes in general. It's a sweet read, though I'm not so sure about Midnight Cowboy, which I intend to read next if I can find it at the library. Having watched the movie first, I get the feeling depression is something I should be gearing up on.

[Vera Snykers · Rating 5 out of 5]

My all time favorite. In de middelbare school een fragment uit gelezen. Direct verkocht. Jaren in de bib terug ontleend, zeker 3x gelezen. Het is verdwenen nu, tweedehands in het engels gevonden. Nog altijd goed bevonde. Schrijver van Midnight cowboy, de triestigste film ooit, maar ook wel heel sterk.

[Martin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is very much an artifact of its time (1969) about a young woman caught up in the counterculture searching for the father whom she has never met. She has many adventures along the way and meets a lot of interesting people. Although some of the counterculture dialogue goes on for too long, it fully captures this wonderful searching era. Highly recommended

[Alie Armenta · Rating 5 out of 5]

These book was an adventure and it resonates with things that do happen in real life. Different Era very hippie life but there's allot reflections and quotes that stick with you in life. Highly recommend to read there's a little about everything drama, loss search of a father. It's the type of book you reread puts you in vibe in every path of your life.