April 23, 2003: Reading Room By Andrea Gollin 88 Photo: A history professor, Roszak coined the term counterculture. (KAREN PREUSS) After his initial attempts to publish fiction in the late 1950s were unsuccessful, Theodore Roszak *58 turned to scholarly writing. But Roszak, a historian, noted social critic, and the author or editor of 13 nonfiction books, continued to write novels in his spare time, and in the mid-1970s got his first one published. His sixth, The Devil and Daniel Silverman (Leapfrog Press), came out in January. A history professor at California State UniversityHayward, Roszak views his work in fiction and scholarly social criticism as different ways to explore many of the same themes. The Devil and Daniel Silverman, a satirical novel that focuses on the damaging effects of intolerance, functions as social commentary. A gay Jewish novelist with a career in free-fall descent, Danny Silverman is invited to lecture at an evangelical Christian college in northern Minnesota. A huge snowstorm traps him at the college, and he becomes the guest of some inhospitable hosts, many of whom believe that homosexuals are the incarnation of the Antichrist. Silverman ends up defending his liberal values, as well as his life. The author of the 1969 book The Making of a Counter Culture about the 1960s, Roszak is credited with coining the term counterculture. That book established his reputation as a social critic and speaker on topics relating to the 1960s, the baby boom generation, and liberalism in American politics. His other works range widely in subject matter, exploring topics such as the use and abuse of technology and the nature of aging, and include The Cult of Information (1986), The Voice of the Earth (1992), and Longevity Revolution: As Boomers Become Elders (2000). I am fascinated by issues concerning the rightness and rationality of western culture, he explains. It was Roszaks interest in writing fiction that led him to study history, with its reservoir of stories, he says. As a student in college and graduate school, he felt that history was one of the few fields that was retaining its humanistic focus rather than becoming more pseudo-scientific and methodologically esoteric. Two of his novels, The Memoirs of Elizabeth Frankenstein (1995) and Flicker (1991), about the film industry, are historical fiction. Both have been optioned for motion pictures. For now, Roszak is sticking to writing novels and has no plans for future
nonfiction. Fiction, he says, is more engaging. Andrea Gollin 88 is a writer in Miami. BOOK SHORTS
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