Peter Beagle? Are you one of the most underrated stylists of the twentieth century? I don't know, I just know your prose is pitch perfect and sweetly honest and I could read it forever.

This is billed as a travel memoir, and indeed, if you want to read a book about the author of The Last Unicorn riding cross-country with his best friend on scooters in 1963, here you are. But this book is really the story of a friendship, of growing up and, of course, apart. It reads like a novel, and perhaps for this reason I felt like I got to know Peter and Phil like they were my own friends. Most memoirs are like funhouse mirrors, but this one felt like a window.

I know I'll be reading this book again. ( )

I bought this book because of the author, and then I ignored it for ages because, when it came right down to it, the idea of it reminded me of On the Road--which I couldn't stand. And I HATED the idea that I'd read this and hate it, as well, having so loved Beagle's other works. I suppose I was afraid that the picture of Beagle offered in this book would somehow tarnish all of the novels, and I don't know what finally led me to pick it up... but I'm so glad I did.

It's lucky I didn't come across this book in high school, or my family might have been horrified and my life might have been very different, but that's the only caveat for this book. Dated as the actual journey and slang may be, there's something unutterably fresh and wonderful about this book. The fashion in which Beagle tells it--with equal beats of hope and dismay, naïve trust and skepticism in the future, and simple fascination with the world--at times reminded me of the nature writing of Edward Abbey, and made me want nothing more than to go back in time and join along for this journey. Reading the book is, of course, as close as we can come... but it is a rather wonderful adventure.

Read it. ( )

REVIEW NOTES: (Goodreads)

"In 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. articulated his dream, JFK was assassinated, and zip codes were first introduced to the US. The world was monumentally changing and changing fast. But in the eyes of future fantasy author Peter Beagle and his best friend Phil, it wasn't changing fast enough. For these two twenty-something beatnik Jews from the Bronx, change was something you chased after night and day across the country on the trembling seat of a motor scooter."

Motorcycle roadtrip before all others - look out. Mood is there, riding along. Beagle's journey into self. An awakening. ( )

Let's ride from New York City to the San Francisco area! OK. On scooters! In the early spring! Oh....Kay? A snap shot of a moment, and a revealing piece of auto-biography that I always link with Samuel Delany's "Heavenly Breakfast", and Tom Wolfe's "electric Kool-aid Acid Test" and Dotson Raeder's "I Ain't Marching Any More", as my 1960's package. ( )