Talk:The Serial

Memories from the book

This was a book which was mostly funny to those of us who lived in the Bay Area in the 60s and 70s but who were non-partakers of this particular scene. I remember sitting in the Oakland Airport in the mid 70s reading it and nearly falling off my chair because it was so funny to me. It is satire of a departed time and it is dated now, but it was a wicked look at the life of the "Marvelous Marin" of those days. It was not funny to the majority of the residents of Marin County but to those, like me, who lived in Contra Costa County it was delightful. It is also an interesting insight into the lives of at least some who had long since abandoned traditional Christianity and were looking for a replacement.

The Marin County crowd were generally upper-middle-class hippie wannabees who worked in the City (downtown San Francisco) by day and then went home to Marin to be rich bohemians by night. I knew a number of them (I worked at Standard Oil on lower Market Street). I liked them but they seemed to be rudderless to me.

I was reminded of it again a few years ago when I purchased a copy of a Limeliters' CD ("Joy Across the Land" with Glenn Yarborough again in the group) where they muse about Lou Gottlieb and his "executive hippie commune" in Marin. And so were many of them.

The 60s and 70s in the Bay Area were fascinating and never to be forgotten. This book brings back the memories of those days for a straight kid from Utah who never quite got over that entire period.

Peace!

Reid Allen, Salt Lake City, Utah —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.122.22.4 (talk • contribs) 20:50, 19 May 2006

Can anyone confirm...

I think that I read somewhere once, that, when this first appeared in Marin County, the author got death threats. When I first read it circa '78 or '79, I had been somewhat exposed to the lifestyle and trends satirized, the stuff was not confined to Marin County (which, one discovers in this book, is the orginal source, the ding-an-sich, the essence) but had spread like jimson weed. This wonderful book was the perfect spoof and antidote; and, like all the really best satires goes to the underlying, ridiculous frailty and fatuity of people. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.212.101.67 (talk) 19:56, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

Relationship to Tales of the City

There's nothing in this article discussing the relationship of The Serial to Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City, which The Serial is a kind of spin-off of. What became Maupin's novel started out in serialized form in the Marin County weekly The Pacific Sun under the title The Serial and later moved to the San Francisco Chronicle. Cyra McFadden's Marin-centred serial was then published in The Pacific Sun under the same title as a replacement. The source already linked to in this article as "That 70s Novel" covers this story in detail. Peter G Werner (talk) 18:27, 3 August 2022 (UTC)