The Serial: A Year in the Life of Marin County

The Serial: A Year in the Life of Marin County (often referred to as The Serial) is a satirical novel written by Cyra McFadden ^[1]. It was first published in book form in 1977. Beginning in 1976 the book's chapters had been serialized in a Marin County, California alternative newspaper, Pacific Sun. The book deals with the life in the New Age of the mid-1970s in San Francisco, California. Perhaps because its subject matter now seems quite dated, The Serial has been out of print for several years in the United States. However, the book was popular at the time of its initial publication. Serial (1980 film) was based on the novel, starred Martin Mull, Tuesday Weld and others. It received limited critical acclaim and limited box-office success.

Plot summary

The Serial is divided into 52 short chapters and it chronicles the lives, loves, and relationships of a number of residents, mostly in their mid-to-late 30s and early 40s, of Marin County, a suburban, generally affluent county directly across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco, California. The plot revolves around Harvey and Kate Holroyd, a couple in the midst of the mid-1970s Marin lifestyle who are undergoing marital problems, although there are many other characters introduced and described throughout the novel. There are elements of soap opera in the book, although the tone is comedic (specifically, satirical) rather than tragic. The novel describes its characters' lifestyles, including their interest in various New Age beliefs and human potential movement groups (including est, transcendental meditation, consciousness-raising, and rebirthing); their unconventional and arguably lax child-rearing techniques; and their embrace of a number of then-current fads, such as fern bars, jogging, and organic food. The book satirizes many of the elements of a particular mid-to-late 1970s subculture, also described to some degree by author Tom Wolfe in his 1976 non-fiction essay "The Me Decade and the Third Great Awakening", particularly as manifested in the lives of people then between the ages of about 30 and 45 in affluent parts of California. Many of the characters in The Serial also speak using a particular jargon or lexicon, saying words and phrases like "flash on" (a phrasal verb meaning to "have a sudden insight about"), "Really" (to signify assent), and others. The Serial contains a great number of specific references to actual locations (restaurants, stores, streets) in 1970s Marin County. In the original edition of the book, and in most if not all later editions, black-and-white illustrations of scenes from the novel accompany the text in many of the chapters.

Reviews

The Serial is a comedy about moderns struggling to keep their chins above the rising sea of their status anxieties. It is a Baedeker guide to a desolate region, the monochromatic inner landscape of persons whose life is consumption, of goods and salvations, and whose moral makeup is the curious modern combination of hedonism and earnestness.

– Conservative essayist George Will, 1977

^[2]

References

1. ^ (2000-04-05) The Serial: A Year in the Life of Marin County. Prion Books. ISBN 978-1853753831. 
2. ^ THOUGHT FOR THE DAY. Retrieved on 2007-10-14.