Native State - Softcover

Tony Cohan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 186325403X ISBN 13: 9781863254038

Publisher: Bantam Australia, 2003

Synopsis

A captivating, deeply affecting memoir chronicling a journey from a Hollywood childhood as the son of a fading show business figure to a bohemian life in Europe and back to his native state of California, where the author must face the man who had driven him away. Summoned from abroad to attend to the ninety-four-year-old father he’s never been close to, writer and musician Tony Cohan finds himself reliving his own peripatetic life—a kaleidoscopic odyssey from California’s sunny postwar promise through the burnt end of the 1960s to the final days of the last century.An engrossing investigation of memory and identity, love and desire, art and fate, Native State vividly portrays the author’s attempts to escape the confines of a celebrity-filled, alcoholic family through music, writing, and travel. His descent into the colorful milieus of musical and literary geniuses and lowlifes, divas and crooks, fortune tellers and culture gods in Paris, Tangier, London, Copenhagen, Barcelona, San Francisco, Kyoto, and Los Angeles coalesces into a distinctive, intimate depiction of a pivotal cultural era. Throughout, Cohan brilliantly interweaves and contrasts his past experiences with his present-day reflections on the universal youthful desire to flee home and family, and the simultaneous “undertow of origins” urging a return. The result is a work that combines unusually rich storytelling with extraordinary literary quality.Poignant, elegantly crafted, and often funny, Native State is an indelible portrait of the artist as a young man, and—as son and dying father grope toward acceptance—a coming-to-terms with self, family, origins, and the elusive American idea of home.

About this title

From the Inside Flap

A captivating, deeply affecting memoir chronicling a journey from a Hollywood childhood as the son of a fading show business figure to a bohemian life in Europe and back to his native state of California, where the author must face the man who had driven him away.
Summoned from abroad to attend to the ninety-four-year-old father he?s never been close to, writer and musician Tony Cohan finds himself reliving his own peripatetic life?a kaleidoscopic odyssey from California?s sunny postwar promise through the burnt end of the 1960s to the final days of the last century.
An engrossing investigation of memory and identity, love and desire, art and fate, Native State vividly portrays the author?s attempts to escape the confines of a celebrity-filled, alcoholic family through music, writing, and travel. His descent into the colorful milieus of musical and literary geniuses and lowlifes, divas and crooks, fortune tellers and culture gods in Paris, Tangier, London, Copenhagen, Barcelona, San Francisco, Kyoto, and Los Angeles coalesces into a distinctive, intimate depiction of a pivotal cultural era. Throughout, Cohan brilliantly interweaves and contrasts his past experiences with his present-day reflections on the universal youthful desire to flee home and family, and the simultaneous ?undertow of origins? urging a return. The result is a work that combines unusually rich storytelling with extraordinary literary quality.
Poignant, elegantly crafted, and often funny, Native State is an indelible portrait of the artist as a young man, and?as son and dying father grope toward acceptance?a coming-to-terms with self, family, origins, and the elusive American idea of home.

From the Back Cover

Native State

“Tony Cohan’s unflinching eye flashes honesty and illumination onto a kaleidoscopic past . . .With lyrical prose and insights that see through the dark, Cohan has written a book you will regret having to put down.’
-Beverly Donofrio, author of Riding in Cars with Boys

“Wry and witty, elegant and evocative, crackling with sexual adventure and sly good humor, Native State is an intimate memoir with all the sizzle and sweep of a novel on a grand scale.”
-Jonathan Kirsch, author of The Harlot by the Side of the Road
On Mexican Time

“Terribly seductive. An enticing and intoxicating vision of Mexico.”
-Denver Post

“His prose is appealing. Chapters read like carefully crafted short stories.”
-Washington Post

“One of those rare, delightful books that allows the reader to enter the author’s mind and float effortlessly from place to place and thought to thought.”
-Albuquerque Journal

Edition details

• Publisher: Bantam Australia
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 186325403X
• ISBN 13: 9781863254038
• Binding: Paperback