Many Pretty Toys

When Nixon orders the bombing of Cambodia, the resulting protests push a West Coast university to the brink of anarchy, altering irrevocably the lives of students and faculty and disrupting the process of storytelling itself. Through the words of two professors and a communal voice known only as "We," Hazard Adams interweaves the political, literary, and philosophical developments of the time into a story in which generations and their histories meet, as well as literary styles and methods, showing how political and intellectual events play on the consciousness of a range of characters. The spirit here is serious and generous, but not without a satirical element as a communal group attempts to establish an elusive identity. With a remarkable breadth of method, Adams deliberately evades the usual literary classifications.