''The Serial: A Year in the Life of Marin County'' (often referred to as ''The Serial'') is a
satirical
Satire is a genre of the visual, literary, and performing arts, usually in the form of fiction and less frequently non-fiction, in which vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, often with the intent of shaming or e ...
novel about
Marin County, California
Marin County is a County (United States), county located in the northwestern part of the San Francisco Bay Area of the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 United States Census, 2020 census, the population was 262,231. Its county seat and ...
, written by
Cyra McFadden
Cyra McFadden (born 1937) is an American writer, who lives on a houseboat in Sausalito, California.serialized in the Marin County
alternative weekly newspaper
An alternative newspaper is a type of newspaper that eschews comprehensive coverage of general news in favor of stylized reporting, opinionated reviews and columns, investigations into edgy topics and magazine-style feature stories highlighting l ...
San Francisco Chronicle
The ''San Francisco Chronicle'' is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of Northern California. It was founded in 1865 as ''The Daily Dramatic Chronicle'' by teenage brothers Charles de Young and M. H. de Young, Michael H. de ...
''. It was first published in book form in 1977.
The book deals with life in mid-1970s Marin County, a suburban and affluent county just north of
San Francisco
San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...
.
The book was popular at the time of its initial publication. It has since been out of print for several years in the United States. It was reprinted in the United Kingdom by
Prion Humour Classics ''Prion Humour Classics'' are a series of small-format hardback novels published by Prion Books in the UK published by Barry Winkleman.
References
{{reflist, colwidth=30em
Lists of novels ...
Martin Mull
Martin Eugene Mull (born August 18, 1943) is an American actor, comedian and musician who has appeared in many television and film roles. He is also a painter and recording artist. As an actor, he first became known in his role on ''Mary Hartman, ...
and
Tuesday Weld
Tuesday Weld (born Susan Ker Weld; August 27, 1943) is an American actress and model. She began acting as a child and progressed to mature roles in the late 1950s. She won a Golden Globe Award for Most Promising Female Newcomer in 1960. Over t ...
. It was received with limited critical praise.
Plot summary
''The Serial'' is divided into 52 short chapters. It chronicles the lives of a group of residents of Marin County, mostly in their mid-to-late 30s and early 40s. The plot revolves around Harvey and Kate Holroyd, a couple in the midst of the mid-1970s Marin County lifestyle who are undergoing marital problems, with many other characters introduced in the book.
Analysis
The period of the storyline covers a time between the heyday of the
1960s counterculture
The counterculture of the 1960s was an anti-establishment cultural phenomenon that developed throughout much of the Western world in the 1960s and has been ongoing to the present day. The aggregate movement gained momentum as the civil rights mo ...
and the culture loosely described as "
Yuppie
Yuppie, short for "young urban professional" or "young upwardly-mobile professional", is a term coined in the early 1980s for a young professional person working in a city. The term is first attested in 1980, when it was used as a fairly neu ...
". There are elements of
soap opera
A soap opera, or ''soap'' for short, is a typically long-running radio or television serial, frequently characterized by melodrama, ensemble casts, and sentimentality. The term "soap opera" originated from radio dramas originally being sponsored ...
in the book, although the tone is comedic (specifically, satirical) rather than tragic. The novel describes its characters' lifestyles, including their interest in various
New Age
New Age is a range of spiritual or religious practices and beliefs which rapidly grew in Western society during the early 1970s. Its highly eclectic and unsystematic structure makes a precise definition difficult. Although many scholars conside ...
beliefs and
human potential movement
The Human Potential Movement (HPM) arose out of the counterculture of the 1960s and formed around the concept of an extraordinary potential that its advocates believed to lie largely untapped in all people. The movement takes as its premise the be ...
transcendental meditation
Transcendental Meditation (TM) is a form of silent mantra meditation advocated by the Transcendental Meditation movement. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi created the technique in India in the mid-1950s. Advocates of TM claim that the technique promotes a ...
, consciousness-raising, and rebirthing); their unconventional and arguably lax child-rearing techniques; and their embrace of a number of then-current fads, such as
fern bar
Fern bar is an American slang term for an upscale or preppy (or yuppie) bar or tavern catering to singles, usually decorated with ferns or other greenery, as well as such decor as fake Tiffany lamps. The phrase came into common regional usage in ...
s,
jogging
Jogging is a form of trotting or running at a slow or leisurely pace. The main intention is to increase physical fitness with less stress on the body than from faster running but more than walking, or to maintain a steady speed for longer periods ...
, and organic food.
Wife swapping
Swinging, sometimes called wife-swapping, husband-swapping, or partner-swapping, is a sexual activity in which both singles and partners in a committed relationship sexually engage with others for recreational purposes. Swinging is a form of non-m ...
and
open marriage
Open marriage is a form of non-monogamy in which the partners of a dyadic marriage agree that each may engage in extramarital sexual relationships, without this being regarded by them as infidelity, and consider or establish an open relation ...
are common as are
cocaine
Cocaine (from , from , ultimately from Quechuan languages, Quechua: ''kúka'') is a central nervous system (CNS) stimulant mainly recreational drug use, used recreationally for its euphoria, euphoric effects. It is primarily obtained from t ...
use and frequent
divorce
Divorce (also known as dissolution of marriage) is the process of terminating a marriage or marital union. Divorce usually entails the canceling or reorganizing of the legal duties and responsibilities of marriage, thus dissolving the ...
s. Many things associated with the human potential movement are mentioned and satirized, including est, the Fischer-Hoffman Process, and ''
Jonathan Livingston Seagull
''Jonathan Livingston Seagull'', written by American author Richard Bach and illustrated with black-and-white photographs shot by Russell Munson, is a fable in novella form about a seagull who is trying to learn about life and flight, and a homi ...
'';
radical feminism
Radical feminism is a perspective within feminism that calls for a Political radicalism, radical re-ordering of society in which male supremacy is eliminated in all social and economic contexts, while recognizing that women's experiences are al ...
and
Sierra Club
The Sierra Club is an environmental organization with chapters in all 50 United States, Washington D.C., and Puerto Rico. The club was founded on May 28, 1892, in San Francisco, California, by Scottish-American preservationist John Muir, who be ...
membership are seemingly ubiquitous; and kids are sent to free-form
summer camp
A summer camp or sleepaway camp is a supervised program for children conducted during the summer months in some countries. Children and adolescents who attend summer camp are known as ''campers''. Summer school is usually a part of the academ ...
s offering
survival training
Survival training is a theoretical and physical practice where participants aim to survive in the wilderness with as little means as possible. Survival training is used to teach survival skills or as a form of recreational activity in which indivi ...
and "spontaneous rap sessions". The book satirizes many of the elements of a particular mid-to-late 1970s subculture, also described to some degree by author
Tom Wolfe
Thomas Kennerly Wolfe Jr. (March 2, 1930 – May 14, 2018)Some sources say 1931; ''The New York Times'' and Reuters both initially reported 1931 in their obituaries before changing to 1930. See and was an American author and journalist widely ...
in his 1976 non-fiction essay "The Me Decade and the Third Great Awakening", particularly as manifested in the lives of people then between the ages of about 30 and 45 in affluent parts of
California
California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...
.
Many of the characters in ''The Serial'' also speak a particular jargon or lexicon, saying words and phrases like "flash on" (a
phrasal verb
In the traditional grammar of Modern English, a phrasal verb typically constitutes a single semantic unit composed of a verb followed by a particle (examples: ''turn down'', ''run into'' or ''sit up''), sometimes combined with a preposition (ex ...
meaning "to have a sudden insight about", as in "I really flashed on that"), "''Really''" (to signify assent), and others.
''The Serial'' contains a great number of specific references to actual locations (restaurants, stores, streets) in 1970s Marin County. In the original '' Pacific Sun'' weekly chapters, black-and-white illustrations by Tom Cervenak accompany the text. These illustrations were included in the original edition of the book and in the first paperback edition of the book.
Reviews
See also
''
I Want It All Now!
''I Want It All Now!'' is a 1978 American documentary television special produced by NBC News about Marin County, California and the hedonistic and narcissistic lifestyle ostensibly characteristic of the affluent county. The program also explored ...