Ringolevio: A Life Played for Keeps (New York Review Books Classics) | 
 enlarge | Author: Emmett Grogan
Creator: Peter Coyote
Publisher: NYRB Classics
Category: Book
List Price: $17.95
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Rating:  11 reviews
Sales Rank: 62309
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 512
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5.2 x 0.9
ISBN: 1590172868
Dewey Decimal Number: 973.91092
EAN: 9781590172865
ASIN: 1590172868
Publication Date: October 14, 2008
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Product Description
Ringolevio is a classic American story of self-invention by one of the more mysterious and alluring figures to emerge in the 1960s. Emmett Grogan grew up on New York City’s mean streets, getting hooked on heroin before he was in his teens, kicking the habit and winning a scholarship to a swanky Manhattan private school, pursuing a highly profitable sideline as a Park Avenue burglar, then skipping town to enjoy the dolce vita in Italy. It’s a hard-boiled, sometimes hard-to-believe, wildly entertaining tale that takes a totally unexpected turn when Grogan washes up in sixties San Francisco and becomes a leader of the anarchist group known as the Diggers. The Diggers, devoted to street theater, direct action, and distributing free food, were in the thick of the legendary Summer of Love, and soon Grogan is struggling with the naive narcissism of the hippies, the marketing of revolution as a brand, dogmatic radicals, and false prophets like tripster Timothy Leary. Above all, however, he struggles with himself.
Ringolevio is an enigmatic portrait of a man and his times to set beside Hunter S. Thompson’s stories of fear and loathing, Norman Mailer’s The Armies of the Night, or the recent Chronicles of Bob Dylan, who dedicated his 1978 album Street Legal to the memory of Emmett Grogan.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 6 more reviews...
 Reads like the work of a hack? WTF? November 20, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
This is the most important book to come out of the '60's and there is certainly nothing "hack"-ish about it. The only book it can be compared to in recent history is "The Basketball Diaries". Read both books, understand that both guys made some stuff up, and then look at the results.
Emmett is not dead yet, imo. But Jim Carroll is.
Odd.
For Keeps October 23, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Cover to cover, only a couple words don't ring true. His hunting account mixes up antelopes and deer, describing a stag in a romantic setting as a pronghorn. And something about his Digger truck delivering free food in the San Francisco slums and districts, the truck changes characteristics from one page to the next. But I would not quibble about 500 pages of laid down Word by a genius tongue smith rapper and social visionary who scorned rhetoric and publicity over anonymous action--can you dig the discipline that would put on a writer? And he never lets up, as episodes flow into each other with great skill and interest.
Fiction or fact?--It does not matter when labels are stripped away and truth is revealed. A man who felt the weight of having "...killed a man back there," before he started his Digger run finally walks away from California in the last sentence of the book, hooking the reader with a sting of implied motivation for his altruism.
An American classic, real life-actor ancestor of critique writers of civilization, and still with plenty of meat for discussion in literature classes.
IS GROGAN FOR REAL? June 14, 2006
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I FIRST READ THIS BOOK IN THE EARLY 70'S AND WAS COMPLETELY MESMERIZED BY THIS CHARACTER, EMETT GROGAN. WHAT A RIDE HE HAD!
I ALWAYS WONDERED IF HE WAS FOR REAL OR NOT. PETER COYOTE, TELL ME PLEASE WAS THERE REALLY A PERSON NAMED EMETT GROGAN OR NOT?
LISTEN UP PRODUCERS,A FABULOUS MOVIE THIS BOOK WOULD MAKE.A GREAT READ FOR ANYONE WITH A SINCERE INTEREST IN THE 60'S.
Unkown legend? March 28, 2006
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Although Emmett wasn't actually "unknown" I entitled this review as such because most people never even heard of him. I believe he kept more to himself and his people than a jumper into the limelight like so many of that time. I met Emmett down the lower east side of NY in 67 along with the Diggers when they first arrived in NY. Some of the Diggers and myself included ended up on The Allen BurkeTV Show if you remember that. We all showed up but Emmett...instead his replacement was Emma Grogan who I believe was fictional and not his wife but of this I'm still not sure even though I was there. They too (The Diggers) were all Merry Pranksters as well if you ask me. I was a runaway at 16 at the time and this was all new to me but I do have to say he was one character that stuck in my mind for many years before I finally looked into whatever became of him. A heart attack on the NYC subway I believe.
When I looked him up I came across Ringolevio and instantly was captivated by the book. A fantastic read and completely believable, at least to me it was. Maybe not, had I never met him. There are few that enter into a life as jamb packed with adventure as Emmett did and what I love most about him was that he created his own world with wild and well tuned visions brought to life.
I highly recommend this book!
 Too wonderful to be true August 10, 2005
1 out of 5 found this review helpful
This is allegedly an autobiography of Emmett Grogan. Once an icon of the 60s, he is, like many heroes of the 60s, completely forgotten now.
Very strange autobiography. First, it's written in third person as if someone else, not Grogan himself, has written it. Well written and well read, however it's simply too wonderful to be true. Grogan - streetwise hood, then drug addict and burglar, he left USA being 15 years old. Next he visits different European countries, enjoys jet-set life, does some job for IRA and continues as a burglar(In the meantime he returns briefly to the USA to murder one snitch). After returning to America for good he becomes an important figure in San Francisco in counterculture as an activist an organizer, a leader of Diggers.
In everything he does he is so wonderful, so brilliant,so sophisticated. He was everywhere, knew everyone, seen everything, everything knows and everything understands. Author creates himself as a larger-than-life hero at least in hippie movement. Other famous icons from the 60s like Abbie Hoffmann for example aren't presented in favorable light. Author even claims that some of them wanted to kill him which is complete b*****it.
Maybe all of this is truth but I'm not buying this.
3 stars( or mabe 2 and half) because it's really well-written and one may read with pleasure(whether to believe it's another story).
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