21/01/18: Glendon Swarthout – Luck and Pluck (1973)

From the back cover: “Charlie is one of the good guys, a good old clean-cut American boy, right down to his Brooks Brothers suit and cordovan wing-tip shoes. He heads off to LA in search of gainful employment and the American Dream. Right there on Wilshire Boulevard he finds it in the hands of Combs-Cohn-LoPresto, top-line Ad agency. Down in the street he meets underground Lulu and Leo the countercultural rocket. There are a lot of laughs, especially as C-C-L stipulate a few things when he joins them: it's creative chastity for Charlie or sex and the sack. But Charlie has the last laugh, and it's a gut-buster.”

Exploring a clever but ridiculous plot, Luck and Pluck tells the tale of a young man who leaves a Native American reservation in New Mexico, moves to Los Angeles and joins an advertising firm. When he learns that they are scamming him, he decides to scam them in return.

It races along with some of-its-time satire about the counterculture. Our hero’s apartment is slowly taken over by hippies and hangers-on, including “the sandal-maker, the bead-stringer, the wool-spinner, the tie-dyer, the ceramicist, the folk-singers, the organic gardener, the Alpha Wave nut, the two Jesus freaks”, plus a pompous, self-absorbed anarchist intent on blowing up “snack food shops”.

There are wider themes about freedom and commercialism, but this short novel is essentially a witty and entertaining shaggy-dog story. A pleasing way to pass a cold and rainy Sunday afternoon.