Analysis
The period of the storyline covers a time between the heyday of the 1960s counterculture and the culture loosely described as "Yuppie". There are elements of soap opera in the book, although the tone is comedic (specifically, satirical) rather than tragic. The novel describes its characters' lifestyles, including their interest in various New Age beliefs and human potential movement groups (including est, transcendental meditation, consciousness-raising, and rebirthing); their unconventional and arguably lax child-rearing techniques; and their embrace of a number of then-current fads, such as fern bars, jogging, and organic food. Wife swapping and open marriage are common as are cocaine use and frequent divorces. Many things associated with the human potential movement are mentioned and satirized, including est, the Fischer-Hoffman Process, and Jonathan Livingston Seagull; radical feminism and Sierra Club membership are seemingly ubiquitous; and kids are sent to free-form summer camps offering survival training and "spontaneous rap sessions". The book satirizes many of the elements of a particular mid-to-late 1970s subculture, also described to some degree by author Tom Wolfe in his 1976 non-fiction essay "The Me Decade and the Third Great Awakening", particularly as manifested in the lives of people then between the ages of about 30 and 45 in affluent parts of California. The book was said by some to satirize suburban California in the manner that John Updike or John Cheever were satirizing Northeast suburbanites.
Many of the characters in The Serial also speak a particular jargon or lexicon, saying words and phrases like "flash on" (a phrasal verb meaning to "have a sudden insight about"), "Really" (to signify assent), and others.
The Serial contains a great number of specific references to actual locations (restaurants, stores, streets) in 1970s Marin County. In the original Pacific Sun weekly chapters, black-and-white illustrations accompany the text, and were included in the original edition of the book, and in the first paperback edition of the book, and in most if not all later editions.
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