• 1974: A Personal History
• By Francine Prose
• Harper: June 18, 2024
• 272 pages, $27.99

By Guest Reviewer Roxana Robinson

Francine Prose’s memoir is a brilliant book: a deeply informed history of the political transformation of a generation, a candid account of the coming-of-age of Prose herself, a member of that generation, and a vivid account of the psychological mismatching that took place on both a public and private level. Politically, that generation thought they had discovered a new and revelatory means of activism. Personally, Prose thought she had met an idealistic hero – Tony Russo – with whom she would have a love affair. Both beliefs turned out to be incorrect, founded on hope, ignorance and misinformation. Both disappointments are the kind that can happen when you are very young, when your own desires can obscure the absolutely clear details of the terrain that lies before you.

Prose is a beautiful and intelligent writer, we knew that, but we hadn’t read her assessment of herself before. She presents a group portrait of everyone who was in her twenties in the sixties, and what happened to them next. She isn’t simply memorializing the nostalgic view of the rise of hippies and drugs and free love – this is a much more thoughtful and interesting exploration of that time. Why did people move to California? What was the draw? There was an ecstatic feeling of rising liberation that somehow centered there – away from the bleak winters and formidable institutions of the East – the government, the colleges, the dour Puritan heritage of New England. Surf’s up in California, and many of us went there to take a risk on the big rollers, to find out what we’d been missing in the traditional east.

What makes Prose’s book so interesting is her acknowledgment of how that all ended – how change is slow and difficult, and doesn’t depend on dropping acid, how the world has its own deeply entrenched patterns, and also, that it’s hard to figure out whom to love. Many of us found it impossible at that stage in our lives. For this is partly a memoir about the devastating failure of a romance, and how easy it is to participate in one. Afterward, the signals are so clear, so obvious. Afterward, you are ashamed of yourself for your role in it. Afterward, you blame yourself for the failure.

But one of the great challenges of memoir is the tone of the writer. How does she feel about her younger self? Prose is both unsparing and compassionate, owning up to things she wishes she hadn’t done (though I am with her decision in those final moments), making deep judgments about that passionate young woman. But how can you live up to everything? All the ideals that drove you at 22? How can you do everything you had hoped to do as a person? Afterward, you blame yourself, but here Prose has given us such a large and intelligent view of this part of history, both of our country and our generation and herself, that we can’t help but sympathize with her in all her choices.

That heady moment has passed, but all is not lost. The whole point of looking back is to understand the past. In this book Prose reveals those few years of manic energy and idealistic commitment, before things shifted into a lower and more practical gear. Prose herself makes that shift, but it becomes clear that Russo does not. She blames herself for not honoring her commitment to him, but it also becomes clear that he never made a commitment to her. To him, she was not a soulmate but a briefly useful friend. It is to Prose’s great credit that she took the relationship more seriously, just as she took the politics of the period more seriously. She has laid out both journeys in elegant and intelligent prose.