was Re: VLVL (6) Brock

[gumbo at fuse.net]

Rob:

> "[B]y definition", are they? My dictionary (Oxford)

I was referring to the Dictionary of Experience, which in some respects grinds more fine than Oxford. This is a point of diminishing value, but just to tidy up, here's Wikipedia on the subject:

"The term is sometimes also associated with participation in peace movements, including peace marches such as the USA marches on Washington and civil
rights marches. However, hippies were normally not antiwar protesters, since they were traditionally apolitical, preferring to drop out from society
rather than change it. Philosophically, hippie thought drew upon the earlier Beat Generation."

http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippie

Some--generally people who were outside the counterculture and dismissive of it--used the word to mean anybody who smoked dope and let their hair grow long in the sixties. I think Pynchon would employ the term more precisely than that.

Don