SynopsisPRIME GREEN opens during Robert Stone's last year in the Navy, when he took part in operation Deep Freeze 3, an Anarctic trip that involved circumnavigating the globe. Once out of the Navy, Stone worked for the old New York Daily News and started school at NYU. He started hanging out at the Cedar Tavern just to be in the same room as Kline and DeKooning. From there they drifted to the French Quarter of New Orleans, where they tried to make a living reading poetry to jazz and working for the Census Bureau. Eventually, in 1962, they went to California, where Ken Kesey had just finished participating in the LSD experiments that were to contribute to the age of psychedelia. Stone experienced the mid-60s of The Merry Pranksters and The Grateful Dead first-hand, accompanied by heavy doses of psychedelics. He travelled for a time on Kesey's celebrated Furthur bus tour, and experienced his 'Acid Test' parties that were later detailed in Tom Wolfe's "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test." The book closes in Vietnam, where Stone witnessed the invasion of Laos as a correspondent for a counter-cultural publication. A powerful memoir, PRIME GREEN, provides an insiders look at a time many knew about only distantly. Stone's expertise as a novelist has helped him here, in his first book-length work of non-fiction, to forge a moving and adventurous portrait of a unique moment in American history., In his first work of nonfiction, award-winning novelist Stone perfectly invokes the magical decade of the Sixties. The powerful memoir provides an insider's perspective of a time many only know about peripherally., A memoir of America's most turbulent, whimsical decade, in the words of the man who experienced it all... From the New York City of Kline and De Kooning to the jazz era of New Orleans's French Quarter to Ken Kesey's psychedelic California, Prime Green explores the 1960s in all its weird, innocent, fascinating glory. An account framed by two wars, it begins with Robert Stone's last year in the Navy, when he took part in an Antarctic expedition navigating the globe, and ends in Vietnam, where he was a correspondent in the days following the invasion of Laos. Told in scintillating detail, Prime Green zips from coast to coast, from days spent in the raucous offices of Manhattan tabloids to the breathtaking beaches of Mexico, and merry times aboard the bus with Kesey and the Pranksters. Building on personal vignettes from Stone's travels across America, this powerful memoir offers the legendary novelist's inside perspective on a time many understand only peripherally. These accounts of the 1960s are riveting not only because Stone is a master storyteller but because he was there, in the thick of it, through all the wild times. From these incredible experiences, Prime Green forges a moving and adventurous portrait of a unique moment in American history.
LC Classification NumberPS3569.T6418Z47 2007