The minds, the glittering personalities and eccentrics of Berkeley and San Francisco come to life in these two novels by poet Philip Whalen. Set in the late Fifties and early Sixties, You Didn't Even Try and Imaginary Speeches for a Brazen Head provide a remarkable window on the nascence of a counterculture. "Whalen's poems are now classics but all too few readers know the equal power of his prose" --Robert Creeley