Culture and Politics in the Sixties

Culture and Politics in the Sixties

Gates of Eden: American Culture in the Sixties, by Morris Dickstein. New York: Basic Books. 300 pp.

A brief advertisement for “A New Magazine for the 70s” features a cropped photograph of a crowd of young people. Superimposed on this icon is the question, “What’s Left of the ’60sT’ The answer: “MOTHER JONES, Finally…. A Magazine for the Rest of Us,” for the veterans of “the generation that got back in touch with our world, in the most basic ways.” The copywriter then rehearses a familiar litany of achievements: “We rediscovered ourselves. Music opened us up, and took off. The Beatles. The Stones. Dylan. We found our own literature, with a tough cosmic, comic vision… Catch 22. Slaughterhouse Five. Cuckoo’s Nest. We identified with a handful of writers. Pynchon. Grass. Barthelme. Vonnegut. Barth.” The political dimension follows: “We put our stamp upon the world by fighting ...