Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
I asked about women writers, not rhetorically, but out of curiosity.  I 
can think of some poets, songwriters and musicians... 

If I had to assert that a woman was a "hippie author" I'd say that 
Ursula Le Guin is worth looking at as related to the back to 
the land part of the hippie movement(s), though the whole question of 
science fiction and alternative culture is another realm of 
exploration, isn't it?

Thanks for inspiring such a vibrant discussion!
  

    
Thanks Gail, and, when I started this project, I had the same
curiousity as to why I could find no women novelists from the hippie
era.  

Actually, there has been discussion by academics as to why literature
took such a backseat to other more instantaneous media, especially
radio and vinyl.  Considering the magnitude of impact the era had on
American culture, its surprising there weren't far more works of
quality literature than I was able to find.

I haven't read much Ursula LeGuin since I'm not big on sci-fi. She's
from the Northwest (Portland), and the right age, so maybe there's an
influence of the hippie phenomenon on her work.  It would be worth
looking into for that chapter I sincerely hope you consider writing!

Again, thanks for the good questions.
  

    
Many of Ursula K. Le Guin's books are not science fiction.  She also
writes "regular" fiction, nonfiction, and poetry.
  

    
I'll check out some of her writing.  Thx.
  

    
Plate o shrimp.

I just learned that Ursula K. Le Guin's father was the famous
anthropologist Alfred Kroeber.
  

    
Yah, that's what "K" stands for in her name!
  

    

That's news to me, too! Sent me off to google where I got tripped out on
reading about Ishi online, which reminded me of the fact that I read
"Ishi, the Last of His Tribe," by Theodora Kroeber, sometime during the
Sixties, as did many of my hippie friends. It had a Big Influence on us
  

    
We read it for a high school class.
  

    
However, remember that Theodora Kroeber never actually met Ishi.  That was 
pointed out to me at a screening of a movie about Ishi several years ago.  
She wrote the book based on her husband's knowledge.  I understand the 
Native Americans in California are kind of touchy about her book.
  

    
I love Ursula K. Le Guin's essays on language, and I love the 
anthropological and mythological eye she brings to her fiction.  

"The Lathe of Heaven" is the book I'd suggest off the top of my head 
to someone who liked this conversation and wanted to have a taste of
her work.  I haven't read it for a long time, it might be fun to revisit.   

"The Disposessed" might relate to alterante lifestyles, or to poor versus 
rich countries, etc, in protraying off the grid idealists trying to 
create an imperfect utopia in tough circumstances, versus the affluent 
mainstream. That, and "The Left Hand of Darkness" are perhaps her most 
famous works. 

I doubt she ever considered herself a hippie, but if we're invoking 
Robert Heinlein, um, hey.
  

    
Heinlein was shocked when hippies would show up at his gate wanting
further guidance in actualizing Valentine Michael Smith's Church of All
Worlds.  He wanted to sue the SF Chronicle when an article claimed
that Stranger In A Strange Land influenced Charlie Manson and his
demonic cult.  Heinlein hired a lawyer to interview Manson in prison
and came to the conclusion that, not only had Manson not read Stranger,
he was scarcely literate. 
  

    
Re women and science fiction in that era -- how about A Wrinkle in
Time?
  

    
I'd have to go back and read that one.  My last encounter with
_Wrinkle_ was in fourth grade, way back yonder in 1977.

Speaking of the '70s, THERE'S an interesting idea that has hardly been
mined:  books about and from the 1970s, from the post-countercultural
heyday.  Namely, what was it like for young Boomers (whether they
identified themselves as hippies, radicals, or neither) as they made
their way back into the social/economic/political/cultural mainstream,
and/or as they observed their colleagues doing so (or not).
  

    
I once had an anthropology professor who called those born from
1954-1958 part of the transition generation for this reason. What about
those born from 1959-1964? It's an interesting question about those
coming of age during the confusing Watergate/Disco/Punk years.
  

    
I remember really enjoying *A Wrinkle in Time* as a kid. Yeah, it would be
worth digging out again. Has it held up well enough that kids today enjoy
it?
  

    
I reread it recently. I think so.
  

    
Interesting, Scott, about your professor's perspective.  One could
break down the entire 1945-64 Boomer generation even further into
striations of those who came of age during different portions of the
1960s, during the '70s and even the last wave who became adults during
the early '80s, I'm sure.  And how were they affected by events and
trends in the larger culture that each group grew up in?  For example,
someone who was born in 1954 might have a different view of economic
prosperity and social welfare from someone (otherwise similar) born in
1964.

And I think it's equally important to note that many of the people
whom we associate with the Sixties and who Made Things Happen in both
the activist and countercultural realms were actually born BEFORE 1945.
 Many were born during or even slightly beofre World War II.  
  

    
Kesey, Brautigan, Robbins, Didion, Wolfe, HST, Pynchon, Farina were
all born between 1935-37, actually. Leary, Hoffman, Rubin, and many of
the key musicians of the era were born before 1945 as well.  

Also, the advent of the information age had a significant direct and
indirect influence on those born after 1960, especially.

So, I agree that the baby boom generation was not some homogenous
phenomenon.  Jimi Hendrix was born in 1942, George W Bush in, what 1947
or 48. 
  

    
1946.   He was born on my 1st birthday.
  

    
Rik, I think your connection to Dubya may disprove the findings of
astrology. :=)  
  

    
God, I hope so.
  

    
I'm curious if anyone watched "Hippies" on The History Channel and has
any thoughts/comments on the documentary? I just saw the show tonight
myself. To me, "Hippies" vaccillated very quickly from sympathetic to
derisive to sympathetic again. Maybe it's in large part the medium of
film and the quick treatment inherent to this style of docu-history.
There were several times I wanted to replay certain segments to more
carefully analyze what was being said and framed.
  

    
Missed it, but you might like this.



The Hippies Were Right!
Green homes? Organic food? Nature is good? Time To Give The Ol’ Tie-Dyers
Some Respect
by Mark Morford

Go ahead, name your movement. Name something good and positive and pro-
environment and eco-friendly that’s happening right now in the newly
“greening” America and don’t say more guns in Texas or fewer
reproductive choices for women or endless vile unwinnable BushCo wars in the
Middle East lasting until roughly 2075 because that would defeat the whole
point of this perky little column and destroy its naive tone of happy rose-
colored sardonic optimism. OK?

I’m talking about, say, energy-efficient light bulbs. I’m looking at
organic foods going mainstream. I mean chemical-free cleaning products
widely available at Target and I’m talking saving the whales and
protecting the dolphins and I mean yoga studios flourishing in every small
town, giant boxes of organic cereal at Costco and non-phthalates dildos at
Good Vibes and the Toyota Prius becoming the nation’s oddest status
symbol. You know, good things.

<http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/05/02/915/>
  

    
I watched Hippies on the History channel.  Seems to me they forgot the part
where we drafted kids and sent them to a war half the world away.

That may have influenced the movement a bit.

The documentary view is that LSD got out of the lab, things got wild for a
few years, then Reagan got elected and brought us back to 'normal'.
  

    
Fascinatng article and string of discussion after Morford's article. 
Thanks for sharing, Rik.  It's interesting how a written essay like
this evokes all these mini essays in response, while a film documentary
like "Hippies" is more overwhelming in the way the visuals allow it to
frame the presentation more subtlely and with short fragmented bursts.
I find this medium more challenging to respond to.  Maybe it says
something to why so many hippies rejected television, even though they
were the first generation to grow up watching it.