Ringolevio

(Paperback, Main)

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Description

Ringolevio is a classic American story of self-invention by one of the more mysterious and alluring figures to emerge in the 1960s. Emmett Grogan grew up on New York City's mean streets, later washing up in sixties San Francisco and becoming a leader of the anarchist group known as the Diggers. The Diggers, devoted to street theater, direct action, and distributing free food, were in the thick of the legendary Summer of Love, and soon Grogan is struggling with the naive narcissism of the hippies, the marketing of revolution as a brand, dogmatic radicals, and false prophets like tripster Timothy Leary. Ringolevio is an enigmatic portrait of a man and his times to set beside Hunter S. Thompson's stories of fear and loathing, Norman Mailer's The Armies of the Night, or the recent Chronicles of Bob Dylan, who dedicated his 1978 album Street Legal to the memory of Emmett Grogan.

Reviews

'one of my favourite books ... The Diggers were devoted to genuine egalitarianism ... this is their story as much as Grogan's and is one of the most fascinating books ever written about sixties counterculture' -- Dylan Jones New Statesman

Author Bio

Emmett Grogan (c.1943-1978) was called a "Superman of the Underground" by The Times (London), and was the founder of the Diggers. On April 6, 1978, the thirty-five-year-old Grogan was found dead on a subway car in New York City, possibly of a drug overdose. Peter Coyote is an actor, activist, novelist, songwriter, and Emmy-winning voice-over artist. After a short apprenticeship at the San Francisco Actor's Workshop, he joined the San Francisco Mime Troupe, where he became a prominent member of the San Francisco counterculture community and a founding member of the Diggers. His memoir is entitled Sleeping Where I Fall.