BLOW IT UP!

by Dikran Karagueuzian ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 16, 1970

Armenian-born Karagueuzian, editor of the campus Gater when the strike began, has produced an account of the '68 San Francisco State black student uprising which seems carefully contrived for a film script with attention throughout riveted on the most dramatic confrontations between administrators, cops and truculent chanting blacks. (""Right on! Right on!"" like a Greek chorus punctuates every harangue.) Cameo-biographies of the chief actors intended to be psychologically revealing are merely stereotyped and sometimes patently presumptuous as when the private meditations of student leaders are intuited. ""That day he had not attended his classes, but did not feel he had missed anything. The only reason he was registered in school anyway, was to organize students. He found school boring."" Assuming the stance of omniscient narrator, Karagueuzian nowhere makes his authority credible. Finding interpretation or indeed any fixed viewpoint unnecessary so long as the narrative is action-packed, Karagueuzian has produced a scenario of events from the formulation of the ten demands, to the bust, to the appointment of Hayakawa (depicted as a buffoon) which seems preconceived and preordained. For all we learn about SFC as an educational institution it could be virtually any college in the U.S. Neither a personal statement of confusion and commitment like The Strawberry Statement nor an objective documentary treatment (Max Heirich, The Beginning: Berkeley 1964, p. 1329), this contributes little to an understanding of what's happening on the campuses.

Pub Date: Feb. 16, 1970

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Gambit

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1970

Categories: NONFICTION