Even in those carefree, long-gone, strong-dollar days, the grant money wasn’t sufficient for a family of three to afford Palo Alto rents. The countercultural revolution was global in aspect: Diggers in San Francisco, Provos in Amsterdam. We were curious to investigate the possibilities of life in the Haight. Living among derelict junkies and spare-change artists was not what we had in mind. Al Young, a fellow writer and former Stegner Fellow, tipped us off to Bolinas. One sunny September afternoon, Tom McGuane and I drove up the coast in his rattletrap Land Rover to investigate. By the end of the day, we’d each rented a place in the little seaside town. I found a furnished house on Brighton Avenue for $75 a month. It was a long commute out of Marin County, across the Golden Gate, and down the peninsula to Stanford, but the Advanced Fiction Writing class the Stegner Fellows were requested to attend met only each Wednesday evening, so the weekly round-trip wasn’t much of an ordeal.
What do You think about Jubilee Hitchhiker (2012)?
