After Things Fell Apart

In the last years of the 20th century, the United States of America no longer exists. California has been divided into two separate political entities. Southern California is controlled by the Chinese Commandos; various warring factions are struggling for control of northern California. The San Francisco Enclave controls the Bay Area. When a group of militant females led by the mysterious Lady Day begins assassinating prominent men, the S.F. Enclave Intelligence and Investigation Office calls in Jim Haley, an operative with the Private Inquiry Office, to put an end to the killings. Haley’s investigation takes him from the city across what is left of the Golden Gate Bridge to wide-open Marin County, where he tracks down Penny Deacon, a show more former Lady Day member. The trail then leads down the Peninsula to Monterey County. Along the way, Haley meets a vast assortment of eccentric characters, some human and some not so human. show less

My reaction to reading this novel in 1994. Spoilers follow.

I didn’t like this novel as well as other Goulart I’ve read though it’s one of his most famous. Perhaps my taste have changed.

The plot in a Goulart story is never much more than an excuse to string together a bunch of silly props and satiric episodes. My reaction to the book is more on its non-literary aspects than its story. This is a satire on the cultural and political aspects of the sixties, and it calls to mind the modern day descendants of these same aspects – bad ideas that didn’t die. Of course there is the typical balkanized future America of Goulart, and it’s inhabited by satirized types recognizable today: university students of bad pop culture, show more worshipers of Third World leaders, black separatists, murderous man-hating “Lady Day” lesbians, Hollywood, therapeutic “abreatic” retreats a la Old Vienna. Then there are rather dated references to the slang and spirit of the times as well as slaps at the drug culture and the gothic novel craze.

I laughed a few times but not much. show less

A post apocalyptic romp...where in the first generation after the event,a divided America, not dosed with radiation has split into little states with some very strange imperatives. Funny, in places.

Originally published in 1970 (when many of the references in the book were fresh, and new), then brought back again in 1977, and in 1985. Ron was (and is) all over the map, and his short stories were always his best work. This was one of his better novels, and I can't say that it's necessarily stood the test of time. I loved it then (in the long ago), and still like it, but then, my perspective may be different.

It schlock and dated but fun.

Ron Goulart is a prolific pulp writer. The 28 books that I've read by him so far can be described in similar terms. See my review of "Wildsmith".