talking, walking, sneezing, shaking your hand, entering a room, leaving a party, picking up a glass
Alison Mills Newman’s Francisco, from 1974, is 5 x 8 x 0.5 inches & 128 pages.
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Ooo, this is my type of book. Alison Mills Newman’s Francisco is about the art of partying and the party of making art, and all the people who were there.
This quick novel is baggy in all the right places (the amorphous passage of time, the flow of days-into-nights, itinerant plans up and down the California coast). Then it’s pinpoint sharp in all the right places (character analysis, the precision of feeling, calling bullshit):
Francisco is sumptuous, fun, pleasure-centric, and serious about pleasure—though this 2023 edition includes an afterword where Newman renounces all the partying. Still, this glowing testimony from nearly fifty years ago remains—and its joy about joy is unimpeachable despite later disavowals.
I think this full, insistent sense of what it felt like comes through with such power mostly because of Newman’s characterizations in the novel. Francisco bursts with filmmakers, actors, activists, scene-hoppers, and all their silky spirits. What with all the parties, there are new people to meet every day and every night, and every person comes in vividly. Below, a small selection of this character parade:
And an exclusive bonus, an exclusive look behind-the-scenes of a professional book photographer’s art and struggles: