Hippie-Dippy?

[Greg Montalbano]

As to the question whether the line "They are in love; fuck the War." is
a "hippie-dippy" lapse -- some further light may be shed by Roger's internal
musings described on the last page of Section One (pg 177 Viking Compass):
 ______
    If the rockets don't get her there's still her lieutenant.  Damned
Beaver/Jeremy *is* the War, he is every assertion the fucking War has ever
made -- that we are meant for work and government, for austerity: and these
shall take priority over love, dreams, the spirit, the senses and the other
second-class trivia that are found among the idle and mindless hours of the
day .... Damn them, they are wrong.  They are insane.  Jeremy will take her
like the Angel itself, in his joyless weasel-worded come-along, and Roger will
be forgotten, an amusing maniac, but with no place in the rationalized power-
ritual that will be the coming peace....
_______

If this attitude could be described as hippie-dippy (and I'm not 100%
convinced that it couldn't), then perhaps some of us might usefully rethink
what the so-called "hippie" view really was.
*****
Also, off the topic, further along in the same passage:

      You go from dream to dream inside me.  You have passage to my last
shabby corner, and there, among the debris, you've found life.  I'm no
longer sure which of all the words, images, dreams or ghosts are "yours"
and which are "mine".  It's past sorting out.  We're both being someone
new now, someone incredible ....
      His act of faith.

This passage struck me as very un-characteristic of the rest of TRP's
writing;  but, if you've ever been in love & immersed in "youthful folly time",
still rather compelling... (which, I guess, shows that *I* have).

Sorry to be reading ahead; but I've never been able to read this book slowly.