Complicated nostalgia

So I read this book back in high school and remember being totally dazzled by it... He came up briefly in Nixonland (as a writer for the Chicago Daily News, he wrote of Daley's attempt to strong-arm his way into the '72 convention after the disaster of '68, "This is America, and someday Richard Daley may be able to earn a place inside the Convention Hall, just like Jerry Rubin. If the Mayor is willing to be patient and to work within the system.") and I thought, hey, let's revisit that!

And guys, there is a lot to like still. The book's a revised version of Greene's diary that he kept through 1964 on the advice of a journalist he hoped to emulate. A lot of it just feels universal (driving around listening to music, trying to get with girls, tight-knit groups of friends, etc.) and some of it is delightfully period-specific (the onset of Beatlemania). It's a really great snapshot of an era and a moment in life, basically.

Of course, some of it feels a little uncomfortable in light of more recent events -- Greene was dismissed from the Trib for having a sexual encounter with a 17 year old (age of legal consent, BUT also a part of a story he'd written, plus he was married) and the Reader, for a while, wrote scathingly of his coverage, claiming that he wrote puff pieces without doing actual research or getting facts-on-the-ground. Which makes the whole thing a little bittersweet (and a little factually dubious) now, and a lot harder to take in. Why is life so COMPLICATED?