Something Good for a Change: Random Notes on Peace Thru Living

Biographical essays discuss the spirit of volunteerism sweeping the nation, the author's experiences with Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters, and his counseling in children's hospitals

Proselytizing without preaching, Wavy Gravy (ne Hugh Romeny and perhaps best known as chief of the Please Force at the Woodstock music festival) puts forth his simple message of comedy and caring in a delightful collection of essays whose message is simple: life hurts only when you don't laugh. Gravy presents a mishmash of Buddhism, '60s political issues, advice on fund-raising and eulogies to Janis Joplin, Lenny Bruce and Abbie Hoffman, among others, and does so with such a sense of balance and humor that his occasional tendency to slide into aging-hippie doublespeak is incidental. His description of his work as a counselor in children's hospitals is particularly poignant, while his account of his own suicide attempt is darkly playful ("death bit down, found me wanting, and spat me back into the world"). Soap bubbles, garbage, various causes and one unique political campaign (in which Gravy runs for a city council seat in a clown costume) are all part of this romp through what's left of the counterculture.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Legendary hippie Wavy Gravy presents 49 goofy and sometimes gripping autobiographical vignettes on everything from Woodstock to Janis Joplin's infectious laugh to the charitable Seva Foundation, using his own life and distinctly wavy sense of humor to get people to ``dare to struggle, dare to grin.'' ``What we have in mind is breakfast in bed for 400,000.'' This sunny if unrealistic announcement, blasted through the loudspeakers at Woodstock, became emblematic for Gravy as, over the years, the toothless, grinning founding father of the still-thriving Hog Farm commune came to represent humanitarian and spiritual action as a fun pursuit, a prankster path. Here, Gravy describes some of the strange and extraordinary encounters that changed a bright but reasonably straight young comedian named Hugh Romney into the cosmic clown with the bizarre moniker (allegedly coined by B.B. King). There's the time Gravy gave the psychotropic drug DMT to Lenny Bruce; the drug, Gravy says, literally blew the comedian out his hotel window but, even as he fell, Bruce supposedly yelled, ``Man shall rise above the rule.'' Or the time, years later, when Gravy bandied with charismatic Tibetan lama Ch”gyam Trungpa and updated the ancient riddle about what comes first, service or enlightenment. ``Do you know that man?'' a follower asked Trungpa. ``That man is self-explanatory,'' answered the lama. Through decades studded with friendships with fellow countercultural icons (Ken Kesey, Ram Dass, etc.), Gravy has apparently perfected his heart and his humor. Here, however, it's his moving stories of his tireless work with ill children that best demonstrate his mushy, generous, exuberant heart. The man who once ran a pig for president has become a seasoned do-gooder, and this enjoyable if unabashedly sentimental collection may well succeed in convincing readers that working to ease suffering in the world can be a wonderful trip. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Like many 1960s radical personas, Hugh "Wavy Gravy" Romney gives the casual yet indelible impression that the most vibrant and concretely memorable times of his life were those day-glow years between 1966 and 1972. Ken Kesey, acid tests, The Grateful Dead, benefit concerts, protests, arrests with clown noses . . . try as he might to evoke "the rest of his life" (including political and charitable involvement) in accessible language, Wavy Gravy apparently only really wants to tell us about those halcyon days. This is fine, though at times annoying, because this series of memoirs is organized in helter-skelter fashion--abruptly jerking the reader from time frame to time frame. Actually, for those unimpressed by name dropping and self-congratulatory rave-ups, the author is most likable--and readable--when he talks about the hospital-confined children he's helped. For large pop culture collections.
- Lauren Bielski, New York
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.