Tropical Detective Story

Tropical Detective Story, by Raymond Mungo
No month stated, 1972  E.P. Dutton Books

A novel in only the loosest sense, Tropical Detective Story is a piece of hippie literature I picked up several years ago but am only now getting around to reading. Raymond Mungo was famous in the counterculture at the time for his nonfiction books about dropping out and starting a commune (Total Loss Farm, etc), but it would appear this publication didn’t resonate with readers as his previous ones had, never even garnering a paperback edition.

For some curious reason, Mungo here delivers what is a sequel to Total Loss Farm, but all character names are changed – he himself, though he narrates the novel and is cleary the same guy from the previous books, is now known as “Dennis Lunar.” I’ve not read Mungo’s other books but they must be a struggle if they’re as pretentiously “literary” as this one is. Mungo seems to have attempted a “Proust for the LSD Generation” or something, and any of the stuff you want from a novel – relatable characters, a sensible plot that builds to a resolution, etc – is not to be found here. Stuff just happens, characters and incidents are introduced with little setup or payoff, and nothing makes an impression on the reader.

Other, that is, than the annoying qualities of Dennis Lunar. As is typical with the other hippie lit books I read back in the day, our narrator is so obsessed with himself that he succeeds in invoking the reader’s wrath. So much of Tropical Detective Story is given over to ruminations on how love is the other side of hate, how hard it is to truly love someone, how love is this impossible concept…and I’m like of coure it is when all you think about is yourself twenty-four hours a day. But then the hippies were for the most part self-obessesed, and our narrator is no different from the other protagonists of the hippie lit I’ve read. Just be warned that, if you choose to struggle through this novel, you will be suffering 160-some pages of egregious navel-gazing.

The book is subheaded “The Flower Children Meet The Voodoo Chiefs,” and years ago when I first discovered this book while hunting for hippie literature I hoped it would be like a psychedelic adventure tale, with a sort of acid illuminati going up against voodoo practicioners or something. Maybe like a men’s adventure take on the Brotherhood of Eternal Love. But my friends no such luck. The subhead is just a lame in-joke because, later in the novel – and as usual without any plot development or resolution – we learn that “Lunar” is hired to write a script for Robert Redford (here too appearing under a pseudonym), and this is the title Lunar comes up with for it. We don’t even get an idea of what the friggin’ story’s about.

No, even the actual title itself has nothing to do with the novel Mungo delivers – “Tropical Detective Story” just being another random phrase Lunar comes up with in the course of his incessant navel-gazing and self-obsessing. Other contemporary reference points for this one would be Confessions Of A Hope Fiend, or even Shards Of God, but where both of those at least had stuff going on in them, ie plots and characters and action, Tropical Detective Story is basically just a prolonged ego-stroke. Whereas Leary and Sanders took their respective stories and mythologized them, providing a bit of fantasy with their psychedelia, Mungo delivers what is really just a nonfiction book about his travels around the world, with the middle section coming off like Brokeback Mountain for the Woodstock set.

Lunar hops around in time; the book opens with him in New York City, aka “The Moon,” reflecting back on a “crime” he committed last year, ie the Fall of 1970. The crime, we learn, is falling in love, and Lunar will act as a “detective” to figure out how the crime was committed. What we won’t learn for a while is that Lunar fell in love with a dude, a ranch hand type named Jake who doesn’t appear until the second half of the nove;. “I used to write books then,” states Lunar when briefly recounting his time at a commune farm he started in Vermont, apparently striving for a meta-fictional approach in that this pseudo-novel is a sequel to Total Loss Farm but never outright declares itself as such. Lunar claims he is guilty of “the sin of pride” and has committed “the crime of love,” and already within the first few pages we know the beating we’re about to endure.

First though we have this random trip to Europe Lunar takes with big and busty Eustacia Vye, presumably a recurring character from the previous book(s). While it would appear these two were in a solid relationship earlier, now it’s on the rocks, and they spend the first leg of the trip to Europe on bad vibes. There’s copious dopesmoking and acid-dropping throughout, but Mungo doesn’t really get into the details, likely because he assumed his readers were in a similar state of chemical influence. Using Lunar’s dwindling proceeds from his previous book, the two hook up with some other girl named Marie and hopscotch around Europe, Mungo doing precious little to bring the characters, situations, or locations to life.

There’s also a lot of messiness to the plot, such as it is – we’re told that Eustacia “loses her mind” in Belgrade after a fight with Lunar and takes off, yet without any explanation she’s still with him and Marie when they visit the next country. But it’s like that throughout, as if Mungo did a couple tabs and hit the typewriter and then sent the publisher his first draft. Lunar of course finds the opportunity to make it with both women – each of whom are grossly undescribed – but surprisingly it’s all left off page. I say this because a lot of the hippie lit I’ve read had some hardcore shenanigans in it. Not so here. Indeed, there’s a part where Lunar lays in bed between the two women, knowing he could have either (or both!) of them, but decides not to partake. This is a definite “hmmm” moment which will have repercussions later.

The Europe stuff just sort of drags on, culminating in a trip to Scotland where the gang hangs out with a rich guy named Jason. Here during an LSD trip Lunar sees a dead friend come to life, a guy named Fox who took his own life the year before. This too will have repercussions later. Finally Lunar returns to America, hanging out again on the commune farm, and here’s where the Brokeback Mountain stuff begins. In another “hmmm” moment which will pan out, a guy named Jake is given more description and setup than any female character in the novel, indicating that he has captured the author’s eye more than anyone else. For my friends it will turn out that Lunar has been “hetero-hiding” all his life and suddenly wants us to know he’s in love with studly ranch hand-type Jake. 

Humorously though, this homoerotic obsession is not shared. In brazen disregard of the identity politics that would one day consume the progressive movement, Jake points out that Lunar can’t be in love with him…because, you know, he and Jake are both men. I find this stuff interesting because it shows that even the progressive movement of the past would be deemed conservative when compared to the progressive movement of today. But I guess that’s “progress,” so to speak, and it makes one wonder how much more progressive the movement will ultimately become – I’m assuming Greg Egan type stuff with multiple genders. Anyway, Lunar is not to be swayed, and spends the rest of the novel badgering Jake with his declarations of love. For some inexplicable reason, Jake goes along with him on his next round of adventures around the world, despite showing no interest in giving in to Lunar’s homosexual advances.

First we have the mentioned bit with the Robert Redford analogue hiring Lunar to write a script. We don’t get much about this and don’t find out what happens with it. Nor is a big deal made out of how Lunar has become a darling of the elites; he flies to New York to meet with his agent and has a few meetings with the Redford stand-in, but absolutely nothing’s made of any of it. But then Lunar flies around the globe so much that it just comes off as yet another brief stop on his interminable trip. Marie from the earlier section shows up at the farm in Vermont, but now she’s no longer Lunar’s soul-mate (that’s Jake, now); instead she too has a thing for Jake! This would seem to set up a bizarre love triangle, but (and you shouldn’t be surprised at such a statement now) Mungo does nothing to exploit it.

Eventually Lunar and Jake go to Costa Rica, then to Panama, where dead friend Fox again appears – this time in “a new body.” After a “second voodoo attack” (ie a bad trip), Lunar is stunned to see dead Fox Rosen now posing as “Louis Caprichio, poet of obscure US background” who happens to live down here in Panama. This is also around the time that Jake and Lunar’s “karmic struggle” has caused an earthquake in South America, their war of wills – Lunar badgering Jake for some gay sex, Jake saying “no thanks” – actually affecting the Earth itself! But things cool down with the arrival of Fox-Louis, who by the way has no knowledge of Fox Rosen, of course – but Lunar and Jake insist he is their dead pal reborn in a new form, and thus Louis Caprichio is referred to as “Fox” throughout. 

Lunar and Jake achieve some sort of LSD gnosis and Lunar seems to imply they might’ve done the deed after all, or at least there’s no need for them to screw because they’ve achieved some sort of oneness or something. Really I don’t know what the hell to think. Anyway the action moves to New York City, where Lunar befriends the mysterious Zagg, a young mage with heavy duty acid that kills the ego. Here we get nonsensical, unexplored surreal bits like Lunar and Jake discovering they can “become invisible” at will and running around town. Zagg is by far the most interesting character on display, but – have you guessed it yet? – Mungo does little to explore the character or bring him to life.

Tropical Detective Story features one of the most humorously random “climaxes” I’ve ever read; after his acid-borne self-awareness, courtesy Zagg’s drugs, Lunar hops on a cargo boat with a newly-introduced fellow hippie named Tresspasser’s Will. Their destination: The Far East. Their mission: To defend US currency against the ever-strengthening yen!! I’m not joking, that’s really how the novel ends. Presumably Mungo planned a follow-up, but I’d wager given the failure of this one to draw in a sufficient audience no further adventures ever materialized for Dennis Lunar.

As a piece of hippie lit, Tropical Detective Story at least scores in that it shows where the headspaces of hippies were in the late ‘60s. But as a novel it’s a grand failure; Mungo seems at times to be attempting a Nog sort of stream-of-conscious thing, while also doing his “Proust for the LSD generation” thing, but neither aspect is sufficiently developed to make an impact on the reader. I’m assuming Mungo’s straight-up nonfiction books are better – I mean, they’d have to be. He is a good writer, though, at least in the flair of the prose itself, it’s just that I was hoping for an actual novel – particularly one about friggin’ Flower Children facing off against Voodoo Chiefs!