""" but there was a time when, as a profile that appeared in The San Francisco Chronicle in 2002 put it, “every enlightened suburban split-level home had its sh

""" but there was a time when, as a profile that appeared in The San Francisco Chronicle in 2002 put it, “every enlightened suburban split-level home had its share of Rod McKuen.” """ I guess that shows what barbarians we were, and may have something to do with my growing up to shop at Tower Records during daylight hours. In the early 1970s, some English graduate students apparently would make a point of disparaging McKuen to their intro to literature classes. The one McKuen fan I knew did not learn to prefer Eliot and Yeats, but she did learn to resent English grad students. (She was a musician, and I'm not sure what she'd have said had I spoken up for Mantovani.) McKuen trivia: at some point not that long ago (2010?) he was the president of the American Guild of Variety Artists, a small union.