{"product_id":"ringolevio-isbn-9781590172865","title":"Ringolevio","description":"\u003ci\u003eRingolevio\u003c\/i\u003e is a classic American story of self-invention by one of the more mysterious and alluring figures to emerge in the 1960s. Emmett Grogan grew up on New York City’s mean streets, getting hooked on heroin before he was in his teens, kicking the habit and winning a scholarship to a swanky Manhattan private school, pursuing a highly profitable sideline as a Park Avenue burglar, then skipping town to enjoy the dolce vita in Italy. It’s a hard-boiled, sometimes hard-to-believe, wildly entertaining tale that takes a totally unexpected turn when Grogan washes up in sixties San Francisco and becomes a leader of the anarchist group known as the Diggers. The Diggers, devoted to street theater, direct action, and distributing free food, were in the thick of the legendary Summer of Love, and soon Grogan is struggling with the naive narcissism of the hippies, the marketing of revolution as a brand, dogmatic radicals, and false prophets like tripster Timothy Leary. Above all, however, he struggles with himself.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eRingolevio\u003c\/i\u003e is an enigmatic portrait of a man and his times to set beside Hunter S. Thompson’s stories of fear and loathing, Norman Mailer’s \u003ci\u003eThe Armies of the Night\u003c\/i\u003e, or the recent \u003ci\u003eChronicles of Bob Dylan\u003c\/i\u003e, who dedicated his 1978 album \u003ci\u003eStreet Legal\u003c\/i\u003e to the memory of Emmett Grogan.\u003cp\u003e\"Grogan was one of the figureheads of the West Coast movement in the mid Sixties and this book – some of which is true – charts his rise to infamy. The Diggers were devoted to genuine egalitarianism and involved themselves in street theatre, direct action and distributing free food. This is their story as much as Grogan’s and is one of the most fascinating books ever written about Sixties counterculture.\" —\u003ci\u003eNew Statesman\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“The best and only authentic book written on the sixties underground.” –Dennis Hopper\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Of all those activists, Hopper thought the most interesting was the late Emmett  Grogan, who ran the Diggers, a group that gave away food and clothing. Hopper thinks  that Grogan's romanticized autobiography, Ringolevio, is the best book dealing with  the '60s. The title was a New York street game ‘of life and death.’ ‘Grogan thought  that anybody who ever played that game would learn their position in life,’ Hopper  said. ‘He was out of New York, studied film making with Antonioni. He was a jewel  thief, a heroin addict and then came to San Francisco and started the Diggers. He  had a lot of charisma.’” –\u003ci\u003eThe San Francisco Chronicle\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Emmett Grogan was a wonderful  storyteller, and \u003ci\u003eRingolevio \u003c\/i\u003eis a great book.” –Jerry Garcia\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“It wouldn’t be surprising  if Emmett Grogan–‘60s underground hero, prime mover of the Digger movement in San  Francisco–were to come back to life. To know Grogan–a wild phenomenon who made the  world his stange and could strut more in a month than Olivier played in a lifetime–was  to entertain such possibilities.” –\u003ci\u003eThe Boston Globe\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“A kind of case study that reappraises  the '60s unapologetically but honestly, noting the mistakes and excesses, but also  acknowledging some of the things that came from it that we should be proud of. Most  people are afraid to admit how much fun it was.\" –Peter Coyote\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eGrogan was “the underground  superstar of the counterculture, a young man whom everyone who was hip had heard  of but whom no one could ever find…Wherever it was happening in the 1960’s, Emmett  Grogan was there.” –\u003ci\u003eThe New York Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“This autobiography is at once an amazing  example of romantic self-mythologizing and a broad history of the hippie movement  of the late nineteen-sixties…Mr. Grogan writes so clearly that he almost convinces  us that the whole story could be true.” –\u003ci\u003eThe New Yorker\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Grogan…who blends idealism  with cold-blooded nastiness, sets forth in this playback not only his own life and  times–but also what it means to be on the other side of the barricades, away from  the hearth where the bowls aren’t always full…Grogan’s chronicle of his life in the  Haight-Ashbury section of San Francisco…is most interesting.” –\u003ci\u003eThe New York Times  Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“The autobiography of a sometime saint…an astonishing mass of raw experience.  It blows myths, settles scores and leaves one pondering the invisible rules by which  history and individuals impinge upon one another.” –\u003ci\u003eLife\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Superman of the Underground.”  –\u003ci\u003eThe Times\u003c\/i\u003e (London)\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Emmett Grogan is the \u003ci\u003enom de plume\u003c\/i\u003e of a youthful author whose  autobiography \u003ci\u003eRingolevio: A Life Played for Keeps\u003c\/i\u003e will likely cause a stir when it  is published.” –\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eA “lengthy, indulgent but intermittently fascinating  autobiography of head Digger Emmett Grogan.” –\u003ci\u003eThe Washington Post\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“The story of  the San Francisco Diggers, pioneers of the Haight-Ashbury scene, told engagingly  by the head Digger himself.” –\u003ci\u003eThe San Francisco Chronicle\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“[The San Francisco Diggers]  combined Dada street theater with the revolutionary politics of free. Slum-alley  saints, they lit up the period by spreading the poetry of love and anarchy with broad  strokes of artistic genius. Their free store, communications network of instant offset  survival poetry, along with Indian-inspired consciousness, was the original white  light of the era. Emmett Grogan was the hippie warrior par excellence. He was also  a junkie, a maniac, a gifted actor, a rebel hero, …and above all a pain in the ass  to all his friends. \u003ci\u003eRingolevio \u003c\/i\u003e[is]\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003ehalf-brilliant\u003ci\u003e.\u003c\/i\u003e” –Abbie Hoffman\u003c\/p\u003eEmmett Grogan (c.1943—1978) was born Eugene Grogan in Brooklyn, New York. Called a “Superman of the Underground” by \u003ci\u003eThe Times\u003c\/i\u003e (London), he was the founder of the Diggers, a legendary anarchistic group in the San Francisco Bay Area during the 1960s that supplied free food, housing, and medical aid to runaways. On April 6, 1978, the thirty-five-year-old Grogan was found dead on a subway car in New York City, possibly of a drug overdose. Besides his autobiography, Grogan was the author of \u003ci\u003eFinal Score\u003c\/i\u003e, a fictional crime novel.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePeter Coyote is an actor, activist, novelist, songwriter, and Emmy-winning voice-over artist. After a short apprenticeship at the San Francisco Actor’s Workshop, he joined the San Francisco Mime Troupe, where he became a prominent member of the San Francisco counterculture community and a founding member of the Diggers. His memoir is entitled \u003ci\u003eSleeping Where I Fall.\u003c\/i\u003e","brand":"NYRB Classics","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46299837989093,"sku":"NP9781590172865","price":22.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781590172865.jpg?v=1767735793","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/ringolevio-isbn-9781590172865","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}