SLSL Succession of the Criminally Insane (was Has anyone seen a Pynchon b...

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In a message dated 2/7/2003 4:13:02 PM Eastern Standard Time, 
malignd at yahoo.com writes:


> I saw a similar idea recently, I think in a review of
> Louis Menand's recent book of essays.  It was noted
> that the sixties was in many ways profoundly
> conservative, even narrow-minded; those for whom the
> sixties is best remembered (radicals, hippies) were
> harshly judgemental of  everyone who didn't look and
> think as they did.  One had merely to be too old (the
> cut-off being thirty!) or short-haired or like the
> wrong music to be written off. 
> 
> 

Was that the sixties or some caricature of one
aspect of an extremely diverse period? I would tend
to be skeptical of such conveniences as: "those for
whom the sixties is best remembered..." Not to deny
the puritanical intolerance of many an "aquarian," but
it never fails to amuse how judgemental some people
get about "the sixties," as if it were a person or single
movement that was supposed to live up to some
preconceived "period standard," or something. Such
reifications are as repugnant as Tom Brokaw's elevation
of the WWII generation as "the best." Sixties bashing,
though, is a bit passe'. It's tough to get a rise out of those
approaching old-age. 

But, as we used to say, whatever turns you on...
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