This book is an experiment – an invitation to think about how different approaches to storytelling and narration shape the ways we think about the world. It takes the form of a musical biography of Charles Manson, perhaps one of the most notorious criminals in US history. 

Everyone “knows” the story of the Manson Family: a California cult that practiced free love, hanged out with the Beach Boys, embarked on a failed musical career, and then killed at least seven people, including actress Sharon Tate, because secret messages in a Beatles album allegedly instructed them to do so. It’s a story that has been told and retold across a number of different genres and media. One of the primary goals of these tellings (and retellings) has been to discern the “truth” of the events that took place in August 1969. That’s not what this book does. Instead, I try to understand how the different genres that emerged or entered maturity in the late 1960s – including rock music criticism, true crime, gonzo journalism, science fiction, the postwar novel, and conspiracy theorizing – have contributed to the emergence of the post-truth order we are living in today.

I want readers to come to this book with an open mind. As an author, I’ve tried to use the generic conventions of the period to craft a narrative that makes you think about how and why rock music came to seem so politically and socially significant from the late 1960s onward. How did we come to assign such importance to rock lyrics? Why did the often fanciful, mythical stories we tell about “the Sixties” seem to make so much sense?

Ongoing thread. More from Nicholas Tochka to follow.