1964 : a novel

Buxton, Michael2023

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Summary

The year 1964 was one of transition from the certainty of the 1950s to the doubt and disruption of the modern world. A young journalist leaves the security of school and discovers an unfamiliar workplace and an escalating series of confronting experiences. As he begins university, he struggles to relate his studies to the everyday events that he encounters. As he seeks to find a place in this new world, he is torn between reporting local stories or following others who have sought grander achievements. While he seeks knowledge through his reporting and academic studies of philosophy and politics, it's through lived experiences that the young journalist discovers different notions of truth. He learns the way language determines meaning and knowledge by shaping our perceptions, and he is confronted by the meaning of truth do we construct our own truth or does one immutable truth exist? When confronted by these competing realities, along with uncertainty, doubt and incremental failure, he soon faces life changing decisions that lead to unanticipated and sudden catastrophe. As his world starts slowly collapsing; as the city of his youth is to be obliterated; and as he is sent to fight in a South-East Asian war, he soon becomes part of the pivotal events that he once reported on. 1964 is a story of our inability to anticipate the future, of how we have arrived at where we are today, and of what we lost on the way.