The Education of Gregory McDonald – Writings about America 1966-1973 by Gregory McDonald

Originally, it was my desire to read everything Gregory McDonald has written. He was written a lot of fun books, such as the Fletch series, the Flynn series and his attempt at being Charles Dickens, Safekeeping¹. But I’ve been burned a few times by his stuff. The Skylar and Son of Fletch books are sort of bland. I couldn’t even tell you why. I picked up the completely unreadable Merely Players, which as far as I can tell was intended to be “literature”, but read more like a soap opera that takes itself seriously.

I’m not particularly interested in the era that McDonald writes in this book. Apparently, he was a reporter covering this and that during the time… interviewing Warhol, Baez, Kerouac and other famous people, along with the less famous.

While it was somewhat interesting, he often went into Opaque Mode, where I simply didn’t understand what the heck he was saying. I made a mental note of one particular paragraph to include here, but like most mental notes I make, I lost it somewhere between my mother’s birthday and instructions to take out the garbage.

Flynn’s World has been out for four years. I should get a copy.

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¹ While he failed to be Dickens, he wrote a fine book nonetheless.