Max Talley is the author of the new novel Peace, Love & Haight. His other books include the story collection Destroy Me Gently, Please. He lives in Southern California.
Q: What inspired you to write Peace, Love & Haight, and how did you create your character Frederick Dorn?
A: I wrote a novella, Santa Fe Psychosis, in 2020. It seemed relatively easy, so I decided to write another crime novel, but very different. One where I could mix in rock music, pop culture, drugs, art, politics, cults, and communes. Unlike SF Psychosis, it would be historical, and I hoped, more literary.
Frederick Dorn went west to be a hippie in San Francisco, but being in his late 20s, didn't want to live on the street. So he manages an art gallery on Haight Street to afford rent on a nearby apartment.
He begins by trying to stop one awful drug dealer who got his ex-girlfriend into heroin, a dealer who sold untested hallucinogens to his best friend, permanently messing up his mind.
Dorn seeks to turn back time to when the Haight District was a safer and more loving place, but he's also a businessman who wants to clean the streets of junkies, drunks, and vagrants who might negatively affect his sales.
I liked that Dorn was stubborn and conflicted, part hippie, part capitalist. That he wanted to do the right thing, but sometimes made matters worse.
Once he gets rid of the notorious dealer Rat-Man, he becomes in demand by the local police and the West Coast Mob as a “private third eye.” He soon lives out the “no good deed goes unpunished” dictum.
Q: Why did you decide to set the novel in 1969?
A: I wanted to do a ‘60s book and thought that year was necessary for the crime aspects to work. I could have written about a young couple in the San Francisco of 1966-67, and it would have been a hippie romance.
After the political assassinations of 1968, the second half of 1969 coincided with the Apollo 11 Moon landing, big rock festivals like Woodstock and Altamont, and the Manson Family killings.
I've never thought those last events ended the ‘60s, but they darkened the positive outlook of peace and love, of expanding your mind and being receptive to those around you. Unlocked doors suddenly got locked and hitchhiking became a much harder gig for long-haired males.
I agree with those who consider America's withdrawal from the Vietnam War as the marker for the end of the ‘60s as a cultural phenomenon.
Q: The journalist Serge F. Kovaleski said of the book, “The antihero in Max Talley’s roisterous novel lays bare the rot of late 1960s America, particularly the spiritual and social decay of San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury neighborhood.” What do you think of that description?
A: It's interesting. Serge and I both love the Rolling Stones, Beatles, Dylan, and John Coltrane. We're fans of that era's opening the collective consciousness, the breaking down of barriers, protests against power-mad politicians. I think we're both fond of hippies, beatniks, the jazz hipsters, as well as sitar and bongo players.
Serge is specifically referring to when crime was rampant, teenage runaways were living in the streets and parks, motorcycle gangs beat up or raped hippies, hard drugs were flooding the district, often supplied by a West Coast Mob, and undercover police tried to bust anyone smoking a joint.
Again, I could have written a beautiful story about serene flower children, but Peace, Love & Haight was a psychedelic thriller, so I focused on the scammers, corrupt cops, street hustlers, fake spiritual advisors, would-be revolutionaries who came along for the ride.
The end of 1969 gave me multiple situations to explore my main characters under stress.
Q: What do you hope readers take away from the book?
A: There are parallels between then and now. The near-violent divisions between younger people who wanted peace and an alternative lifestyle and the not-so-”silent majority” of conservative blue-collar workers who supported Nixon has disturbing similarities to the present day.
Protesters against the government now tend to be older, while some of the most conservative voices are youngish men—which is bizarre. Topsy-turvy.
Frederick Dorn takes matters into his own hands. His motives are decent, but what he attempts single-handedly is difficult. There are times when we have to get our asses off the couch, speak our mind, vote in an off-year election, march in a demonstration.
Jack Nicholson as McMurphy bets he can lift a cement fountain in the One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest film of Ken Kesey's novel. He loses the bet since the task is impossible. Afterwards, one of the sanitarium residents says, “You didn't lift it.” He looks around and says, “Yeah, but at least I tried. At least I tried.” That's what I hope readers take away from my novel.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I'm finishing a longer version of Santa Fe Psychosis to get back into print next spring, since the original publisher went under in 2023.
And if all goes as planned, my novel The Duke of Barstow will be published next fall. It's about a mid-40s travel writer assigned an article on towns in the Mojave Desert/Inland Empire. He discovers an older flimflam man, a trickster who met Elvis and Howard Hughes in Las Vegas when he was 20. They embark on a series of absurd adventures together.
The narrator writes an article then a book about this Duke of Barstow, then it slowly becomes a road trip into the mind, a desert odyssey. The idea was to be funny, surreal, and eventually meaningful. Like many writers, I write the book I want to read, then hope it finds favor with or connects to other readers. I have high hopes, always.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: My books are available at Bookshop, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon. News on my writing and art is at www.maxtalley.com.
I really appreciate your tireless dedication to throwing a spotlight on a wide variety of different authors, Deborah. You are helping the independent literary community in a crucial way. Thank you!
--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with Max Talley.
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