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Few events during that whirlwind of movements, conflicts and
upheaval known as "the sixties" took Americans more by surprise, or
were more likely to inspire their rage, than the rebellion of those who were young,
white and college educated. Perhaps none have been more maligned or misunderstood
since. In A Fiction of the Past, Dominick Cavallo pushes past the contemporary
fog of myth, cold disdain and warm nostalgia that shrouds the radical youth culture
of the sixties. He explores how the furiously chaotic sixties sprang from the
comparatively placid forties and fifties. The book also digs beyond the post-World
War II decades and seeks the historical sources of the youth culture in the distant
American past. What were the historical precedents of the political ideas advanced
by Students for a Democratic Society, the largest student group in American history?
Where does the hippie counterculture -- that strange melange of sex, drugs, rock
and roll and "do your own thing" individualism -- fit into the broad
sweep of American culture and history? Cavallo shows how sixties radicals were
raised to be competitive, self-reliant and individualistic, with the hope they
would take advantage of the booming economy of the forties and fifties. But sixties
youth culture reasserted pre-twentieth century American myths and values of work,
self-reliance and democracy that contradicted the America of high technology,
bureaucracy and big government. A Fiction of the Past not only sutures
the youth culture to American history, but shows how its most radical ideas and
values were deeply etched in the American grain. Dominick
Cavallo is Professor of History at Adelphi University. |
