Reliving the '60s
Author taps Zeitgeist of Vietnam era youth

Missoula, Mont., writer Phil Condon recounts a year in the lives of high school dropouts and war protesters during the 1960s as they travel across the country engaging in hippie-esque activities.

Q: In writing this portrait of 20somethings of the '60s, did you draw upon recollections of your friends and acquaintances of that era?

A: I embellished, changed and re imagined much that I experienced, saw, heard or heard about, and compressed it into the one-year storyline of the novel. Much about Miller is similar to me, in terms of life experiences; the essence of (Miller's girlfriend) Maureena has a lot to do with my own first lover and sweetheart. (Rabid war protester) Grant is in some ways my, and Miller's, alter ego; some of his thoughts and impulses are those I argued with internally, yet his "California" nature and history are based on friends I made when I first attended college in Los Angeles in 1965-67.

Q: Did you travel around the country during the 1960s?

A: I traveled between 1965 and '72. Much of that was (spent) ricocheting back and forth between Omaha (Neb.) and Southern California One of my closest college friends was from Seattle, so I visited him and even lived in Seattle for several months. We hiked and camped on the Olympic Peninsula in 1969, and I witnessed the demonstration or riot or police action at the ROTC Building on the University of Washington campus that I fictionalize in the novel. I stumbled upon it without intent; my friend and I were walking around the campus, and suddenly, it was passing us, and I followed.

Q: How did this novel come to be?

A: "Clay Center" developed over a long period of time in my mind and heart, sometimes nagging at me like a missing tooth. I think I was trying to find a way to make meaning out of a period of my own life where the meanings were so muted and multiple that they were more like a dream than life. From there, it was a process of dreaming deeper and deeper, and then revising by bringing to bear all I knew instinctively and had learned formally about technique how to imagine the effect of every line, every bit of dialogue, every gesture, every scene on possible ideal readers.

Q: What do you hope readers will come away with after reading "Clay Center?"

A: I hope readers are moved and touched by the characters and story first. Everyone knows what it's like to be on the cusp between adolescence and adult. Everyone knows some version of wild first love. Everyone knows loss. So in that well of emotion, I hope readers might value the idealism and hope of the young more deeply and realize that our personal lives are always enmeshed in the larger political times and world in ways we often can't fully see.

Q: Do you know of other fiction that deals with the sense of idealism and despair of the Vietnam era from the protesters' point of view?

A: There's much good nonfiction about the times, and there's good fiction about the war itself, but I haven't seen too much fiction that feels to me as if it's really dealing with the idealism and despair deeply.