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 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. 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", as in "I really flashed on that"), "
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 by Tom Cervenak accompany the text. These illustrations were included in the original edition of the book and in the first paperback edition of the book. ==Reviews==