The Thumbnail Book Reviews
by John Q McDonald --- 5 March 2007
by Sandy Darlington
This is a little book, just 92 pages, and put together from pieces published in other places. As a whole, it reads unevenly, but it offers a small window into a time and a place, like many other small books of its type. Sandy Darlington, half of a folk duo in the mid-60s, was also a writer of short pieces for the small press of the time. The book is set amongst pieces he wrote during 1969 and 1970. They read as reflections on his life, and have a refreshingly skeptical tone. Other writers indulge in the conceit of sounding like they have a newly received truth, an alternative lifestyle, a critique of the establishment, or the mind-bent experiences of psychedelic drugs. Darlington lives through the same times and some of the same drugs, but turns a more jaundiced eye upon the subculture of his time. His adventures have a more deliberate aspect to them, his fatherhood, his view of the excesses at Altamont, and even a thoughtful description of his drug trips. Each piece has a truncated feel, as though they were edited for appearance in a periodical. They may have benefitted from an expansion for the book form. And yet, Darlington's take on his experience is a an enlightening read. A hard to find book, with a colorfully psychedelic cover.