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The Counterculture of the 60s and a Changed Literature

In the dominant counterculture of the period, the cult of violence merged

with the cult of escape. In some respects, the hippie culture of the 60s derived from

the hip culture of Harlem in the 20s, but more immediatel it was lin!ed to the best

generation of the "#$0s, particularl %llen &insberg's bitter lament ()I saw the bestminds of m generation destroed b madness, starving hsterical na!ed,* dragging

themselves through the +egro streets at dawn loo!ing for an angr fi- in Howl

and /ac! erouac's dirge for the lost promise of the +ew 1orld in isions of Cod

("#32, which &insberg introduces as )The boo! was a dirge for %merica, for its

heroes' deaths too, but then who could ecept in the unconsciousness4a dirge for

the %merican Hope that /ac! (and his hero +al carried so valiantl through the

land after 1hitman4an %merica of pioneers and generosit4and selfish glooms 5

eploitations implicit in the pioneers' entr into oreign Indian 5 7oose lands4

but the great betraal of that manl %merica was made b the pseudo8heroic

pseudo8responsible masculines of %rm and Industr and %dvertising and

Construction and Transport and toilets and 1ars-. 9ut the new music of the "#60swas the music of the :olling ;tones and the &rateful

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efforts to represent or mirror life, and the )aristocratic impulse- which manifested

itself in efforts to subordinate life to art b transforming life's muddle into art's

order and beaut.

1hat 7ailer see!s in nonfiction is a wa of redefining these impulses4an

underta!ing shared b several of his contemporaries. /ames 9aldwin and 1al!er?erc and 1illiam &ass have combined the writing of fiction and nonfiction, while

ounger contemporaries including ;usan ;ontag and /oan

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