Synopsis
A magazine writer describes his years as a fraternity boy at Berkeley in the early 1960s, discussing his ambitious classmates, their dreams, and their disappointments during a decade of promise. 75,000 first printing. $75,000 ad/promo. Tour.
Reviews
In a crisp portrait of a generation, Colton entwines his own life story with those of four fraternity brothers with whom he bonded amid the 1960s student protests at the University of California-Berkeley. He had a brief career as a major-league baseball pitcher, then became a writer in Oregon. Twice divorced (his first wife was actress Hedy Lamarr's daughter), Colton recently overcame marijuana and alcohol addiction. Among his PiKA brothers, Jim van Hoften, a bomber pilot in Vietnam, became an astronaut on the Challenger space shuttle and is now an aerospace executive. Hard-drinking, womanizing Steve Radich, a cynical Marine lieutenant in Vietnam, cheated on two wives; his New Age spiritual search ended in death when he crashed his plane in 1979. "Country bumpkin" Loren Hawley went into real estate, spent a year in jail for tax evasion, avoided commitment with women but ultimately married in 1989. Ron Vaughn, a black man who passed for white, was racked with ambivalence over his identity and guilt at having abandoned a child he had fathered. He underwent psychiatric hospitalization, recovered and became an architect. In this male counterpart to Sara Davidson's Loose Change (which chronicles the lives of three UC sorority sisters), Colton powerfully tells the stories of the five men's search for self-worth, their difficulty in communicating their feelings, and their anger toward women. Photos. Major ad/promo; author tour.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
"Goats" were Pi Kappa Alpha pledges at the University of California in the early 1960s. Colton, who had been one of them, recounts his life and those of four Pi Ka brothers from Berkeley to middle age. Obviously, there are changes. The "dullest" brother becomes an astronaut. One battles mental illness. Colton goes from being a jock to becoming a writer. Still, change comes slowly. Boozy frat parties evolve into drug use and drunken-driving arrests. Evasion of taxes is a grown-up form of buying term papers. Most notably, Colton never seems to understand the women's movement when, ironically, it is attitudes like those spawned by Pi Ka that helped bring about feminist unrest. Not a nostalgia book designed to leave us with warm, fuzzy feelings for the past, Goat Brothers is nonethless recommended for libraries serving upscale Baby Boomers.
- Jim Burns, Ottumwa, Ia.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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