Max Talley. (Contributed — Tony Mastres / M.Photographic)
SANTA CRUZ — San Francisco’s status as the epicenter of the ’60s countercultural movement is well-documented, but it was not limited to just the city itself. Its elements spread into nearby cities like Berkeley, Oakland, Fairfax — all of Marin County, really — and even outside the Bay Area to places like Monterey and Big Sur. As gonzo journalist Hunter S.Thompson once wrote in his book “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas”: “There was madness in any direction, at any hour.”
That includes Santa Cruz, where rebellion, counterculture and free expression were prominent. When Santa Barbara author Max Talley was looking for California locales to be featured in his ’60s-set thriller “Peace, Love & Haight” — a book featuring countercultural enclaves ranging from San Francisco to Laurel Canyon in Los Angeles — he naturally set one of the chapters in Santa Cruz.
“Peace, Love & Haight: A Psychedelic Thriller” stemmed from Talley’s desire to write a book about the ’60s, one that showcased the parallels to today’s political climate as well as stark differences.
“America is not fighting a war, so the resistance isn’t primarily based around collegiate and post-collegiate youths protesting the draft,” he said. “Today, the movement has an older demographic, based on people who have been through these battles before and are annoyed that many freedoms seemingly settled in the ’60s and ’70s have to be fought for once again.”
Talley’s father was a book publisher, and while he never sought to become a writer or fulfill his father’s wishes to become an editor, he loved reading books. He was particularly drawn to the works of Ray Bradbury and Kurt Vonnegut.
“I knew at some point I would write, but I played music for a while, I did some paintings, I did other things,” he said. “Then, eventually, it sort of bit me and I figured I had to write some books and I had some various ideas of ones that I would do.”
Talley’s first book idea was about a group of self-described “eco-pranksters,” not unlike the “Monkey Wrench Gang,” who seek to sabotage the system by disrupting environmentally harmful activities. Talley even got an agent but was unable to sell the book, which remains in unpublished limbo to this day.
“Someday, I hope to get back to that and try to write it,” he said. “I think it’s on floppy disk (now).”
In the meantime, Talley has written short stories for literary journals and anthologies, published his own literary collections, the dystopian thriller “Yesterday We Forget Tomorrow” and another crime thriller “Santa Fe Psychosis.”
“I wanted to do another kind of thriller but totally different, not one that’s just a standard detective story but one that involves all kinds of stuff, whether it’s the region, the area, the culture, the counterculture, art, music, drugs,” he said. “I wanted to throw in the kitchen sink.”
Thus, “Peace, Love & Haight” was born, telling the story of a San Francisco art gallery owner who accidentally gets rid of the city’s most notorious drug dealer and finds himself living a double life as an informant, assisting cops and becoming a target of the mafia. The book is set in the tumultuous year of 1969, where lingering moments of countercultural optimism and American idealism were still reflected in events like Woodstock and the moon landing, but came in conflict with the still ongoing Vietnam War, Manson Family murders and the violence that marred the Altamont Speedway Free Festival.
However, Talley’s research began when he attended college in the ’80s, when he listened to a lot of ’60s music and perused issues of Rolling Stone from that time.
“It was research done over the years, and then when writing the book, it was more like checking the exact details,” he said.
That additional research consisted of reading internet articles about that era, magazine articles from the ’60s and authors like Ken Kesey and Tom Wolfe who wrote extensively about the counterculture.
“I wanted as much of the backbone of that time to be as realistic as possible,” said Talley.
The story begins on Haight Street, which had been a mecca of the Summer of Love two years earlier, and takes protagonist Freddie Dorn up and down the California coast. One of his stops is Santa Cruz, which Talley was very familiar with. From 1993 to 2001, he lived in Monterey where he worked as part of an art collective and played in the local bands Jupiter Vox, Foamscape and The Mudskippers. He made frequent trips to Santa Cruz, where he spent his time having sourdough pancake breakfasts at Zachary’s, seeing shows at the Catalyst Club and Palookaville, performing with his bands at the KPIG studios and going to the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk.
The latter plays a prominent role in “Peace, Love & Haight,” where Dorn is asked to make a mysterious delivery.
“I knew the Boardwalk would be something to use in there, since I’ve grown up in New York City, I’ve been to Coney Island,” he said. “It seemed like the contrast was good and seemed like a good thing for a crime thriller to throw in there.”
References are also made to other locales like West Cliff Drive, Wilder Ranch and the town of Davenport.
Talley lived in the Monterey Bay area decades after the ’60s, but his impression of Santa Cruz — based on research — during that time was that of “an outlaw kind of town,” something he said it retains a bit of today.
“There was a police presence, but there was also a wildness that anything could happen,” he said. “I thought that would lend itself to my story.”
Talley said “Peace, Love & Haight” demonstrates how the ’60s was an example of the desire for open-minded freedom circling back to “a more controlling conservatism.”
“This can be seen in the 1920s Jazz Age ending with the Depression and Prohibition, with ’60s and ’70s permissiveness being quashed in the Reagan ’80s,” he said. “I believe the ’60s quest for enlightenment — for breaking away from cultural norms, for seeking meaning in life — is just as valid today. Perhaps it is just much more difficult to achieve.”
“Peace, Love & Haight” is available locally at Bookshop Santa Cruz, 1520 Pacific Ave., Santa Cruz. It can also be purchased at online retailers like Bookshop.org, Powells.com, Keplers.com and BarnesAndNoble.com.
Originally published at Nick Sestanovich