
Mitchell's new book is Three Years Our Mayor: George Moscone and the Making of Modern San Francisco.
I asked the author about what he was reading. Mitchell's reply:
I like to read both fiction and nonfiction, and usually switch back and forth between the two with each book I read. I have read a few novels recently, but my favorite was Rachel Kushner's Creation Lake. Some might say it comports with my background and personality that I'm a big Rachel Kushner fan. We are both Jewish, both grew up in San Francisco and both seem to have a particular love for the western part of the city. As a young person Kushner spent a lot of time in the Sunset District, which is just south of Golden Gate Park whereas I identify more with the Richmond District, just north of the park. While we didn't go to the same highVisit Lincoln Mitchell's website.school-Kushner went to Lowell and I went to University High School-I have a lot of friends who went to Lowell with her.
In Creation Lake, Kushner tells a story of aging lefty radicals in rural France and evinces a vague contempt, respect, admiration and sense of absurdity towards the group to which I could relate. The novel is told in the first person, and the main character is a woman sent to infiltrate this old lefty group. Kushner's portrayal of that character was mesmerizing and relatable despite being the kind of character who I knew if I met in real life, I probably wouldn't like at all. Creation Lake is very much a character and vibe, rather than plot, driven book, but it drew me in as these rather obscure French characters became very real to me. It is the kind of book that is best read slowly so that the characters seep in, and you have a chance to dip into and out of their world over a course of a week or two.
I also recently read Bill Graham Presents: My Life Inside Rock and Out, the memoir of the legendary music promoter Bill Graham. Most people who are familiar with the history of rock music and the 1960s counterculture know a bit about Graham-and this book is very much written from Graham’s perspective. Naturally, he was the tough guy and hero of everystory-at least that’s how Graham saw it, but this book was much more than that.
Graham had an extraordinary life, one deeply intertwined with the Jewish twentieth century. His childhood journey of staying one step ahead of Nazi genocide before finally landing in the Bronx after being adopted by a Jewish American family captures the horrors of what remains the worst chapter in the long and difficult history of the Jews. Graham experienced that journey as a boy and recounts it powerfully.
By his mid-thirties, Graham was living a very different life. He was successful, his own boss, was able to do what he wanted and worked with some of the most important cultural figures of his time. Graham died in a helicopter crash when he was only 60, so the memoir is unfinished, but the contrasts of his life and, if you read between the lines, the trauma he carried with him throughout his life, make for a story that is not only important reading to understand rock music, but also to understand the Jewish American experience.
Both books, not surprisingly, have a connection to San Francisco. Kushner grew up there and Graham made a bigger impact on that city than any other. Additionally, Kushner, like me, grew up in the shadow of Moscone’s San Francisco, when it was already giving way to the more conservative 1980s iteration which eventually created the foundation for today’s San Francisco.
The Page 99 Test: San Francisco Year Zero.
The Page 99 Test: The Giants and Their City.
The Page 99 Test: Three Years Our Mayor.
--Marshal Zeringue