High Across The Prairie

Steve Otto's latest novel takes an honest look at 1970's Kansas.

Memoirs Of A Drugged-up, Sex-crazed Yippie ---Tales from the 70's Counterculture: Drugs, Sex, Politics and Rock and Roll.

By Steve Otto
Authorhouse Press/2005

Reviewed by Tim Pouncey

Kansas in the late 1970's was so different from today; the Sunflower State might as well have been located in Holland.
Remember what it was like to share drugs with close friends and complete strangers? Remember when casual sex was so casual you didn't even know your partners name? Remember when the political climate of Kansas came down squarely on the side of tolerance? Remember when your personal philosophy of life was defined by rock lyrics and not a mission statement?
You don't?
Well, Steve Otto does. In his latest semi-fictional novel, Memoirs Of A Drugged-Up, Sex Crazed Yippie (Authorhouse Press/2005), Otto excavates 1970's counterculture like an archeologist loving dusting off a Mastodon tusk. In a brisk 349 pages, Otto gives us a lucid look at a Kansas few people remember --- or can't remember due to a plentiful supply of "controlled substances" that were constantly and cheaply available. Characters romp through Wichita, Lawrence and even Sedalia Missouri when a cheap thrill was worth what you paid for it and pleasure was just the flipside of danger.
But to dismiss this book as just another nostalgic stoner reminiscing about the last days of the counter-culture would be a major mistake. Although there is a certain "back-in-the-day" wistfulness about the time before political correctness was a mantra, Otto tempers his dreamy history lesson with brutal honesty.
The narrator of the story --- a composite of just about every old druggie you ever met --- may graphically describe the bliss of mainlining MDA, he also reminds us that brief moment of pleasure most often occurred in a squalid apartment at broken kitchen table next to sink full of dirty dishes.
Like all good storytellers, Otto takes the reader places they've never been before. Like William Burroughs and Charles Bukowsky, Otto sometimes takes you to places you've never really wanted to visit. Yet, Otto makes it worth the trip by including generous portions of political discourse, Cyrenaic philosophy, post-adolescent lust and near-suicidal thrill seeking to keep the narrative moving along like a junkie careening through a police roadblock.
Otto's work is always provocative and this book will undoubtedly draw the wrath of both solid conservatives and neo-feminists. Otto's characters never mask their contempt for the right-wing agenda and Otto's narrator never hides his obsession with female anatomy. However, criticizing Memoirs because it baits conservatives and objectifies women is missing the point. Filtering 1970's Kansas counterculture through the sensibilities of a naive middle-class, catholic school educated, twenty-something is no easy trick but Otto mostly pulls it off. He has a good ear for times-past and tries --- often successfully --- to make his prose read like it would have been written by someone experiencing these situations 30 years ago. Trying to be simultaneously innovative, entertaining and honest is a juggling act on a unicycle, but Otto is generally at his best when everything's up-in-the-air and he's peddling frantically. When the narrator's budding Marxist politics and his discussions with Iranian nationalists clash with his dawning awareness that Kansas politics has taken a sharp turn to the right, Otto makes it work.
Is Otto's look into the rear-view mirror a true reflection on the 70's, or do the objects simply appear bigger than they were? Ultimately, it doesn't matter. Memoirs resonates with characters buckling under the weight of the America Dream with redemption harder to find than next snort of Cocaine.

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Direct from the publisher, $ 12.25
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War on Drugs or War on People?: A Resource Book for the Debate

By Steve Otto
Ide House (February 1, 1996)

Book Description:
A chilling book, Otto exposes government corruption in their war on drugs: from the idiocy of outrageous prison terms for small amounts of pot, to minimal time for selling or possessing crack. Otto argues that the war on drugs is more of a war on people in an effort to stifle dissent and control personal actions in a draconian state, as seen in his confrontation with major politicians who accept kickbacks from drug overlords.


Reviewer: An Amazon.com reader:
This information-packed book deals with an issue not taken seriously often enough. Read it with an open mind and a desire for knowledge. You just may be surprised by some things.

This book is available at:
Fetch Books,
Amazon.com,
Amazon.co.uk

Memoirs of a Drugged-Up, Sex-Crazed Yippie

Memoirs of a Drugged-Up, Sex-Crazed Yippie takes the reader through the life of a 1970s counter-culture drug user. Mark Spies goes from casual pot smoking to habitual use of pharmaceutical narcotics and cocaine. Due to the changing sexual attitudes, Spies has several unconventional sexual encounters. The 1970s brought us the "Woodstock generation." There was a sense of idealism that developed at the beginning and died at the end of that decade. Many counter-culture books focus on the 1960s, yet there are plenty of events in the 1970s that deserve attention. Nixon's war in Vietnam and Cambodia dominated the news and affected America's youth. Nixon's war on drugs impacted the counter-culture life style. Then there was punk rock, disco, casual cocaine use and revolutions braking out around the world by 1979.
With politics in the background, this book gives the reader a look at drug use and the difficult business of drug dealing. The drugs, sexual attitudes, music and politics made the 1970s what they were. Taken as a whole, this book will give some insight into the people and events of the 1970s counter-culture.
Steve Otto is a free-lance writer, living in Maize, KS. He is the author of War on Drugs/ War on People, published by Ide House, 1995, an expose of government corruption connected with the "war on drugs." Otto has published numerous articles in magazines, journals and newspapers.

About The Author
Steve Otto is a free-lance writer, living in Maize, KS. He is the author of War on Drugs/ War on People, published by Ide House, 1995, an expose of governmental corruption connected with the “war on drugs.” Otto has published articles nationally, in Contemporary Marxism, Paraplegia News and Vocational Biographies. In Kansas he has written for The Andover Journal, The Mt. Hope Clarion, the travel section of The Wichita Eagle, Kansas Works, and the alternative culture magazine Plethora. He is the past editor and publisher of two newspapers The Wichita Public Voice and The South Hutchinson Post Dispatch. During the 1980s, Otto worked as a reporter for The Clinton Daily Democrat and The St. Clair Courier, in Missouri.