Sleeping Where I Fall (review)

164Fourth Genre Sleeping Where I Fall by Peter Coyote Counterpoint Press, 1998 384 pages, cloth, $26.00 The actor Peter Coyote, best known in mainstream culture for his work in such films as E. T,Jagged Edge, Sphere, and others, as well as his role in the sitcom Cybill, has written a memoir that is far removed from the self-serving, co-written, glitzy fluff of other celebrities. Sleeping Where I Fall is enlightening and disturbing in about equal measure, reflecting the heady and revolutionary counterculture ofthe 1960s and early '70s, which he experienced as actor and social activist. Coyote's trip into the counterculture begins in earnest when he became a member of the San Francisco Mime Troupe in 1965. The Mime Troupe took traditional characters and plots from commedia dell'arte (sixteenthcentury Italian popular theater) and transformed them into commentary on the war inVietnam and capitalist oppression. This appropriation of a form turned to subversion in their most successful production, The Minstrel Show, which used that racist and slapstick bit ofVaudeville to question the assumptions ofboth white and black audience members. Even in 1965 before the "Summer of Love" it was clear that the snake was in Eden. Hard drug use was already taking the edge off ofsome of the Troupe's cast. Bill Lyndon, who Coyote describes as a "diminutive Lenny Bruce," was also a "gifted criminal" who "supported a deep fondness for narcotics and amphetamines by working [stolen] credit cards." Lyndon's death from cancer—speeded by a self-destructive use of dilaudid—is one in a fist "longer than I have the heart to type," Coyote writes. The San Francisco Mime Troupe eventually evolved into the Diggers, a group ofartists and anarchists who established free stores and services in San Francisco in the late '60s. From the Diggers, Coyote became involved in a country-wide network of commune members, the Free Family, seeking to establish a genuine alternative culture. This is the heart of Sleeping Where I Fall, and it is also the most exhilarating and problematic. If Dickins wrote about the best and worst of times, Coyote writes about the best and worst ofpeople. For every PhillisWilner who went from the back of a Hell's Angel motorcycle to become a nurse and care giver, there's a "very streetwise troublemaker named Gregg" who was ripping off stuff from a commune—stuff which Coyote retrieves through the tactic of waking"Greggjust before daylight by sticking [a] pistol in his snoring mouth." Book Reviews165 Which brings us to Coyote himself. Born Peter Cohon, son ofa wealthy East Coast stock trader, Coyote changes his name after a peyote experience during which he sees the footprints he leaves behind him as paw marks. In Native American mythology Coyote is often the Trickster—a supernaturally transformative figure. Coyote—both the Native American Trickster and the Hollywood star-to-be recognize no rules. The Coyote of Sleeping Where I Fall practices the precise movements of commedia dell'arte farce, and becomes close enough friends with Pete Knell, president of the San Francisco chapter of the Hell's Angels, that Knell offers to sponsor Coyote to become an Angel himself. The exuberance for the times Coyote lived through is clear, as is his love for the many people who made the trip with him. However, the communal experiment sometimes conflicts with a call to personal responsibility that beckons even a '60s Trickster. When Morris Cohon, Coyote's brilliant, irascible father dies and leaves his wife to face bankruptcy proceedings, the son is little help. Coyote cuts his hair and tries selling stocks onWall Street, making a single sale in the months he tries this ill-fated career choice. During this time he commutes to Manhattan from his father's Turkey Ridge estate in Pennsylvania. Although Coyote's mother declares that he can live atTurkey Ridge as long as no one else does, other members of his extended "Free Family" arrive— and stay even after Coyote moves on. At first it's only Coyote's girlfriend and child, but others inevitably follow. One Free Family member, Tommy Lavigne, manages to auction off most everything that isn't nailed down (for his...