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Prime Green

Prime Green: Remembering the Sixties
AuthorRobert Stone
LanguageEnglish
Genreautobiography, memoir
PublisherHarperCollins Publishers
Publication date
January 5, 2007
Publication placeUnited States
Pages229 pp
ISBN9780060198169
OCLC466315902
Preceded byBay of Souls 
Followed byFun with Problems 

Prime Green: Remembering the Sixties is a memoir by novelist Robert Stone, published in 2007.[1] The book is structured as a series of personal vignettes[2] recounting Stone's global experiences covering approximately 15 years, from about 1958 to 1972.

Stone begins this memoir during his final year in the military (1958), when he visited South Africa as a navy journalist. At that time, Stone was serving in the Navy aboard a transport ship in the Indian Ocean.[3]

The book ends with Stone in another foreign outpost, this time working as a reporter and correspondent in Vietnam, where he witnessed the invasion of Laos. Some of these experiences were the impetus for what is perhaps Stone's most well-known book: the National Book Award-winning novel Dog Soldiers, published in 1974.[4]

Many things happen during the time period between these two episodes. Some of the highlights include Stone's marriage to his wife Janice, and their move to New Orleans in 1960, a city that provides the setting for his first novel A Hall of Mirrors. Stone also describes his family's four-year expatriation in England. However, the core of Prime Green is Stone's account of his friendship with Ken Kesey,[5][6] starting at Stanford but including New York at the end of Kesey's famous bus trip with the Merry Pranksters to the 1964 New York World's Fair.[7] Michael Silverblatt points out in an interview with Stone that the various "locutions," specific to the 1960s, are interesting to hear again as they're channeled through the prose of Prime Green. Stone agrees that some of the images of the 1960s evoked by the spoken word now seem anachronistic. But other locutions still retain their evocative qualities.[8]

The memoir is an important document for some cultural historians because it is a first-hand account of many (now iconic) 1960s counterculture moments in the United States, and so may be a vital primary source documenting a crucial time period in a country's cultural, literary, and historical inheritance, transition, and legacy.[9]

Critical reception

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Kirkus Reviews called the book "an excellent piece of work, and an invaluable gloss on a body of fiction that looks more prescient, and important, as the decades pass."[10]

References

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  1. ^ Kirn, Walter (January 7, 2007). "Stone's Diaries" – via NYTimes.com.
  2. ^ Stone, Robert. "Prime Green". NPR. Retrieved 2013-11-25.
  3. ^ "on Robert Stone's Prime Green, Carolyn Forche, The Writer and the World | On the Seawall: A Literary Website by Ron Slate (GD)". Ronslate.com. 2007-09-22. Retrieved 2013-11-25.
  4. ^ Stone, Robert (2007-01-03). "Prime Green: Remembering the Sixties by Robert Stone : Book Review - USATODAY.com". Books.usatoday.com. Retrieved 2013-11-25.
  5. ^ Floyd Skloot (2007-01-14). "Robert Stone remembers the '60s / Ken Kesey has central place in memoir of novelist's hippie days". SFGate. Retrieved 2013-11-25.
  6. ^ Nancy Klingener (12 January 2015). "Key West's Literary Community Mourns Robert Stone". wlrn.org. Retrieved 12 November 2015.
  7. ^ Louis Branning (11 February 2007). "Uncle Bob's Van: A Review of Robert Stone's Prime Green: Remembering the Sixties". The Millions. Retrieved 2013-11-25.
  8. ^ "Robert Stone — Bookworm Interview: March 29, 2007". KCRW. 10 August 2023.
  9. ^ "Letters from New York". americansc.org.uk. Retrieved 12 November 2015.
  10. ^ "PRIME GREEN | Kirkus Reviews" – via www.kirkusreviews.com.
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