Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
"It was a dizzy period of transcendence and awareness: transcendence
of compromised and obsolete value systems, awareness of the enormity
and richness of a previously unsuspected inner reality.  Its zeitgeist,
despite what you may have heard, was only secondarily political.  As
much as it’s been emphasized by uncomprehending journalists, the
political movements of the time (be they pacifist, feminist,
environmental, or racial) were largely the result of fallout from a
spiritual explosion." 
                                        Tom Robbins, from “The Sixties”


When I first read this, having read the essay at Robbins' suggestion,
it struck me as right on.  In light of Cynthia's comments, I am
thinking that this spiritual explosion is not inherently about the
realm of higher power.  In terms of humanism, this explosion became
manifest in the amazing collectivist energy of the time (and its
idealism expressed in John Lennon's "Imagine.")

This does not negate, in my thinking, the spiritual/religious
exploration of the period that delved far beyond the organized
Judeo-Christian constraints in the America of the '50s.  But it does
consider the here-and-now human spirit within the prevailing cultural
dynamics of that time. 
  

    <scribbled>
  

    
Great photo, Michael! 

Joan Didion IS Oedipa Maas (from Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49). 
She's a tad bit older than most of these hippies, so conservatively
hip and bright, but an
outsider to the scene that she dissects with her rapier wit.
  

    
For clarification, Slouching Toward Bethlehem is Didion's first book,
a collection of essays, one of which is "Slouching Toward Bethlehem." 
The others have to to with other aspects of living in the Golden State
in the '60s.
  

    
>> were largely the result of fallout from a
spiritual explosion.

To me, the message of the 60's was that the "dominant Paradigm", as it
were, was no longer working, maybe never worked, and that something
better had to be found for society, and that had to start on an
individual level. This was a profoundly threatening idea to the status
quo.

To me, that's political. When you threaten the power structure, that's
*always* political. And the 60's movements were a direct threat to the
power structure. 
  

    
There's a great exchange between Abbie Hoffman and Timothy Leary on
this subject that I quote in The Hippie Narrative. It helps us
understand what I think were the two primary "camps" within the
counterculture:

HOFFMAN: We saw in the sixties a great imbalance of power, and the
only way that you could correct the imbalance was to organize people
and fight for power.  Power is not a dirty word.  The concept of trying
to win against social injustice is not a dirty kind of concept.[…]
LEARY:  Abbie, you […] have much more faith in the political system’s
ability to change things, and I believe with William Burroughs that
it’s the culture that changes––you change the way men and women relate
to each other, you change the way people’s consciousness can be moved
by themselves, you change their music and their dress, you change the
way they relate to the land and to other forms of plants and animals,
and you’ve got yourself a revolution––to use your word, a fuckin’
revolution––that’ll make the politicians and power-mad people… it’s
gonna happen so fast they won’t know it’s gonna happen.
HOFFMAN: […] Tim, if you don’t regard the four years you spent in
prison as a political act, you took one trip too many. […][I]t was a
political act.  So to separate what is cultural from political when we
are talking about American society in the fifties and sixties is an
absolutely hopeless and ridiculous task. 
  

    
Time has come down on Abbie's side.
  

    
I'm not convinced that the future of mankind doesn't rest more with
Leary's perspective.  Hoffman lost his political war in no uncertain
terms, but the culture did change, not as Leary envisioned, but with
enough residual enlightenment to at least leave us with a few shards of
hope for our collective future.
  

    
WADR, except on a casual, wouldn't-it-be-nice basis, nobody is concerned
about the future of mankind.  People are concerned about their own futures
and those of their kids.   There is no world government, and if there was,
it would concerned with the futures of the people running it and its own
perpetuation.

"Hoffman lost his political war in no uncertain terms, but the culture did
 change, not as Leary envisioned, but with enough residual enlightenment to
 at least leave us with a few shards of hope for our collective future."

There are always an enlightened few, but we don't vote them into office
very often.   And most of the world's population has no political voice
worth mentioning.

I'm afraid that I'm as pessimistic as Vonnegut and his predecessor, Mark
Twain.   Leary was wrong and the culture didn't change enough to stop a war
that was so obviously bugun under false pretenses, nor are people concerned
enough about our nation legalizing torture and shredding our constitution
to mount so much as a sustained letter writing campaign.    If there were
actually a cultural shift worth talking about, the media would be inundated
with protest to the point where they'd actually have to acknowlege it.

The photos of Abu Ghraib are online at salon.com.   Go look and see what
we've become.
  

    
>>> nobody is concerned

I don't think it is lack of concern, but related to this jaded ennui
we've discussed in here. People don't think they can make a difference
so they do nothing. We're barraged with info and horrors but there is
little significant contextualization. We're all weary.  The ailment is
systemic and most of those at the top––corporate and political––are
content with this apathy in the little people. 

This updating of the Leary/Hoffman discussion is like a 'glass
half-full, glass half-empty' assessment on the current state of man and
what the future holds.  You will not get one ounce of disagreement
from me on how heinous this current administration is and how they have
trammeled on the best of what this nation stands for. Bush has stirred
in me all the reasons I found the hippie ethos attractive in the first
place.   

Maybe it's only intuition, but I sense that the hippie movement was
only the first stirring of a consciousness revolution that is in a
state of near latency now, but which will erupt again.  I don't know
what it is that will precipitate this, but when this
collectivist/spiritual/political/economic/lifestyle outburst occurs, I
think it will be much more along the lines of Leary's observations than
Hoffman's. Maybe it won't manifest itself again until there is a
systemic breakdown. Maybe I'm wrong, but one can hope that an
enlightened ethos will one day prevail.  If not, then the best we can
hope for is our own small pockets of peace.
  

    
>>>I'm not convinced that the future of mankind doesn't rest more with
Leary's perspective

Yes, the self centered, self promoting cynical bastards. 

'Twas ever thus!
  

    
>Go look and see what we've become.<

Go look at what we have always been. 

I frankly don't understand the view that we transcended for a while
and then fell back. Any concern for the human race needs to embrace the
warts as well as the whoop dedoo. Everything else is elitist
regardless of posturing to the contrary. 
  

    
>>> from Robert:  "I frankly don't understand the view that we
transcended for a while and then fell back. Any concern for the human
race needs to embrace the warts as well as the whoop dedoo." 



Don't we all have those transcendent moments--collectivist and/or
spiritual--where we've connected with one another, felt like we've
overcome the mundane and elevated ourselves to a higher state of
connectedness in our core relationships, our community, or in a
gathering?  I don't see this as whoop dedoo. I think it's ethereal, but
not make-believe.  In my mind the collectivist spirit of
we-can-change-the-world hopefulness was the hippie epoch's most
redeeming attribute. This was at the heart of its consciousness
revolution.

This push/pull between our warts and the quest for transcendence has
always marked the human condition. There is ample evidence that this
yearning has often been exploited to solidify elitist hierarchies, but
the yearning itself is by no means inherently elitist.    
  

    

I can understand robertflink's skepticism, as far as the degree of
importance placed on the impact of the '60s. Most every generation likes 
to hold its own markers of youth as having had a special significance, 
even if that significance isn't as evident to those of other generations. 
Those of us who came of age during the '60s and early '70s are no exception.

The hippie era might look like a pale little blip to those who spent their 
youth schmoozing in Paris cafes with the likes of Miller, Stein, Nin. 
I wouldn't be at all surprised to learn that old men who fought as youth
in the American Revolutionary War would roll their eyes and smile politely
when -- in 1835 -- middle-aged men who'd fought in the War of 1812
reminisced about the importance to the world of the role they'd played in 
their youth. 

I suspect the question of whether the hippies made a real difference in the 
cultural and political path of the world since then isn't one that can be 
answered definitively. There's no way to have a "re-do" in the time 
continuum (much as many of us might wish there would be...).

So instead I'll persist in talking with Scott about his book!

Who do you see as making up the biggest potential audience for The
Hippie Narrative? Aging hippies? Students of American literature?
People interested in the cultural change of the '60s?
  

    
>I think it's ethereal, but not make-believe.<

Our use of language plays mind games on us. We are familiar with
something we label "real". Our dichotomous thinking conceives of the
opposite: "ethereal". We then use the label in thinking and
communicating. Soon we all(?) agree that "ethereal" is sort of real. 
Then we further dichotomize between "ethereal" and "make believe" and
so forth.

But I digress. Cynthia is right. Let's get back to the book. (I
appreciate Scott indulging our digressions, however.) 
  

    
"Ethereal" is a tough word, I agree. Language so often limits us. I'll
try this:

Was there a shared spirit that the hippies were able to manifest that
is found suffocated in our postmodern era?  
  

    
>>> Who do you see as making up the biggest potential audience for The
Hippie Narrative? Aging hippies? Students of American literature?
People interested in the cultural change of the '60s?

The Hippie Narrative is a literary study that also serves as a
cultural history of that era. I believe it fills a needed void. Of
course, when I wrote it I wanted to imagine that the book would appeal
to both a scholarly audience as well as to a general readership
interested in the era. Maybe it will.  Realistically, though, if the
book is to sell well by academic standards, then I think it would be as
a required text in American college literature classes or for American
Studies or Cultural Studies courses.

The book just came out six weeks ago.  Now that it's out there, how
well it is received and how widely it will be read is all but out of my
control.
  
Sometimes it's not the biggest audience, but the right audience. The
most rewarding feedback I've received thusfar came from Gurney Norman,
author of Divine Right's Trip. I hope he doesn't mind my sharing this,
but his letter validated all that went into writing this book:

"First, your treatise on Divine Right's Trip is great.  Really, I am
very impressed that you saw into the book so well, better than anyone
in all the years. Your perception, your own writing style, your
overview of the Counterculture subject, all truly excellent.  I read
your essay on DRT twice instantly.  Then I began to explore the whole
book, all the writers you selected, and it is clear to me that The
Hippie Narrative is an important book, and indeed, a definitive
contribution to American letters.  Your insights into the books you
treated and the era in general plow fresh ground in considering the
literature of the sixties/seventies Counterculture.  You have shown the
impact on the national culture the Counterculture has made.    

So I thank you for such good work."
  

    <scribbled>
  

    
>Was there a shared spirit that the hippies were able to manifest that
is found suffocated in our postmodern era?<

The mind wants to answer "absolutely" because it hates the idea of
spirits being suffocated, particularly by the postmodern era (or any
era, for that matter). 

Another way of putting the question would be: "Was there a pathology
that the hippies were manifesting that has been eliminated by the
enlightened progressive culture of modern times? 

Ask a loaded question and .................
  

    
>>>I'm not convinced that the future of mankind doesn't rest more with
Leary's perspective

>> from Michael Z:  Yes, the self centered, self promoting cynical
bastards. 

'Twas ever thus!


If you're talking about Leary as self centered, self promoting and
cynical, then he and Hoffman were two peas of a pod and neither were
as representative of the hippies as they made themselves out to be.  

For clarification, (since the extracted quote can be misconstrued), I
was differentiating only what each of them said in their exchange,
which distills, I think, the two major thrusts of the hippie
counterculture––one more dionysian/mystical/cultural, the other more
neo-Marxist/overtly politicized.  

Talking about Leary and Hoffman in their 60s roles, whether as
individuals or self-appointed spokesmen of the era, is a larger topic. 
There were, however, two different perceptions of "revolution" being
promulgated.
  

    
>>> from Robert:  "Was there a pathology
that the hippies were manifesting that has been eliminated by the
enlightened progressive culture of modern times? 

Ask a loaded question and .................


I had to call around to my posse to answer this. (These guys were the
perfect age to be at the party):  Dubya, Rummie and 
Tricky Dick Cheney all convinced me that the pathology has been
eradicated and (if you are rich enough) your tax cuts will enlighten
you. Also, your progressiveness will warm the cockles of every living
molecule of your planet. Praise the....(nevermind). Oil leave it at
that.
  

    
>>> Most every generation likes 
to hold its own markers of youth as having had a special significance,

Sure, but I would put the 60's up with the Civil War in terms of
resulting massive societal changes. And as a matter of fact, because of
the Civil Rights movement, the two are connected. 
  

    
>> from mz: I would put the 60's up with the Civil War in terms of
resulting massive societal changes. And as a matter of fact, because
of the Civil Rights movement, the two are connected.


My favorite quote from The Hippie Narrative echoes this sentiment: 

New York Times movie critic Karen Durbin stated in a 2001 movie review
that “the cultural and political upheavals of the 1960’s and ‘70s were
as traumatic and transforming in their own way as the Civil War had
been a century before.  But it’s as if we don’t want to think about
that time, much less risk revisiting its great and terrible vitality”
(Durbin, NY Times, 8/19/01).  
  

    

The really critical thing about the 60's that makes it more important
that almost any other time in history: the population rose up and
forced the ruling class to halt a devastating war.

That never happened before in America. 

When were the other times it happened in Europe? The only one I can
think of was when the Bolsheviks took Russia out of WWI, and at that
point that country was facing a total breakdown of society.
  

    
I'm not sure what that had to do with hippies or counterculture.   Things
only changed when the straights got tired of losing their kids for no good
reason.