The Goodbye People by Gavin Lambert By Steve Rudd

Loneliness doesn't consist of not having friends. Loneliness has nothing to do with that! It's being unable to express your deepest feelings and most private thoughts. This novel is one of my favourite pieces of fiction, with the author Lambert's fresh writing style zestfully spurting in the vein of Jack Kerouac's to exhilarating extents. The characters in this novel are fantastically conceived, and the reader really gets to know each in turn as they reveal their hopes and fears while living their lives in Southern California, specifically in the Los Angeles area.

It was no use living in the world anymore, it only broke your heart. The prime characters lead hippie-influenced lifestyles and do their best to NOT conform with the rat race of working for a living as much as they can. In this way, The Goodbye People is the early-70's equivalent to Douglas Coupland's life-enhancing Generation X masterpiece of a novel that was published, exactly twenty years later, in 1991. And even back in the 70's, Lambert reflects that It used to be much simpler. Either you withdrew passively to simple hills and lived in peace the way nature is supposed to, or you chose militancy, staying in the world to protest against it, making noise and trouble. As much as this novel does reflect Kerouac's intense eagerness to live life to the full, Lambert's writing style is far easier to read than Kerouac's, but that's not to suggest that Lambert's writing is necessarily better. His is merely a different writing style without the surreal and flamboyantly poetic nature of Kerouac's wild imagination. Still, Lambert is a hugely philosophical person and there are some amazingly quotable lines in The Goodbye People to take away from the read with relish, and to use on unsuspecting people given a perfect time and place to show off. Wouldn't it be great if you didn't have to live your life, you could just dream it? Regarded in certain circles as a classic piece of contemporary fiction, The Goodbye People is a truly inspirational read, revolving around people who feel a deep-rooted need to truly liberate themselves and to be free. All words are lies, and anyone who speaks can't help being a liar. That's because when we find words to describe something, we turn it into something else. Speech wasn't invented in order to communicate. ISBN 1-85242-442-7 (first published in 1971) www.serpentstail.com

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