Be Not Content: A Subterranean Journal

Be Not Content is a coming-of-age novel set in San Jose, California, in the mid 1960s—describing William Craddock’s experiences as a young acid-head. This is a hip, profound, and wonderfully-written book, a unique chronicle of the earliest days of the great psychedelic upheaval. Be Not Content is filled with warmth and empathy, tragic at times, and very funny in spots, a wastrel masterpiece where laughter plays counterpoint against the oboes of doom. A mystical underground masterpiece.

William Craddock was born in 1946, and grew up in Los Gatos, California. His family was well-off, with his father an executive. As a teenager, Craddock said that he wanted to be an outlaw and a published author before he was twenty-two. He achieved these goals, joining the Night Rider Motorcycle Club and finishing his masterpiece, Be Not Content, at the age of twenty-one. Craddock attended San Jose State college, he wrote for the Santa Cruz "Good Times" newspaper, published a second novel, Twiliight Candelabra, and wrote three more novels, still unpublished. He died in 2004.