Poor Little Rich Girl
One of the ten greatest non-fiction books I have ever read is Revolution in the Head: The Beatles' Records and the Sixties by the late Ian McDonald. Besides containing the most revelatory song-by-song analysis and criticism of the Beatles to be published thus far, McDonald also offers a commentary on the decade which they shaped at its best and its worst. The "worst," in his summary, was that people carried an inevitable questioning of all the norms of civilization a few steps too far, resulting in a world full of arbitrary meanings to no meanings at all, where the only motivation for doing anything was that it felt right. This attitude prompted the breakdowns of the family, religion, and social order, prompting a conservative backlash, and the effects of both are still being dealt with today.
Robert Greenfield's A Day in the Life is a 300-page case study of McDonald's hypothesis, chronicling the marriage of two children of privilege in 1960s London: Tommy Weber and Susan "Puss" Coriat. Both were wealthy, descended from old money and aristocracy (with trust funds to match—and Puss was presented to the Queen at her coming out), and amazingly good-looking. But both also got caught up in the 1960s come-as-you-are, do-what-you-like in the name of expression attitude with disastrous results involving alternative religions, sexual experimentation, drug smuggling, and drug use. What makes Tommy and Puss stand out from other such stories is more than their money…their lives intersected with those of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones (Tommy brought a kilo of cocaine to the continent, strapped to his sons' bodies, for Mick Jagger's wedding—although it was promptly consumed by Keith Richards during the Exile on Main Street sessions), and the London film world (Tommy had a lengthy relationship with Charlotte Rampling, while Puss carried on with Anita Pallenberg).
Parts of A Day in the Life are profoundly moving. Greenfield prints excerpts from Puss's letters and diaries, and they are a heart-rendering chronicle of a mind breaking down under the effects of LSD and more, with lengthy, punctuation-free descriptions of magical occurrences at Glastonbury turning to desperate pleas to her children that they live a better life. And Tommy and Puss's intense love for each other, which survived despite an eventual divorce and multiple sexual partners for each, is presented in a very believable, matter-of-fact manner which makes a reader accept how they could still care about each other in the whirlwind of indulgence.
However, overall, the book is poor more often than not. The chapters are poorly organized, facts are not properly checked (Orson Welles was shooting The Trial when the Webers met him, NOT The Prisoner), and there is a confusing lack of information, as names pop up without introduction and one major character, Puss's titled lover for two years, is never even identified! Even worse, the book begins with a prologue of a day in 1971 when Tommy learns Puss has committed suicide and must break the news to children Jake and Charlie. In the actual narrative, Puss dies with 100 pages to go, and her persona is so compelling that reading an endless round of Tommy on various drugs and in various derelict positions gets tedious fast.
This is a shame. Greenfield co-wrote another of the ten greatest non-fiction books I have ever read, Bill Graham's autobiography. Mixing Graham, a Greenfield fill-in-the-gaps narration, and the voices of around a hundred people who knew Graham, the book avoids ALL the mistakes of A Day in the Life while offering an even more powerful picture of the 1960s, as well as their before and after. Read that instead.
(Note: The Weber boys turned out to be successful, stable adults. Jake Weber became an actor, most well-known for playing Patricia Arquette's husband on Medium.)
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