Beatriz Izquierdo González

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The 1960s and The New Journalism-Fall 2020

Compare and contrast Joan Didion and Tom Wolfe’s impression of the San
Francisco counterculture.

“Living the American dream”, the motto by which various generations of hopeful, ambitious
Americans had abided during decades, already seemed too far-fetched in the sixties.
Unsurprising, bearing in mind, the country was experiencing what could be considered a
cultural revolution or perhaps, more accurately a countercultural revolution.
In the midst of this national turmoil, the hippie movement arose as a reaction to the
restrictive dynamics and organizational structures of the middle-class society. The idealistic
values advocated by this community: free love, liberal sexuality, nonviolence, openness…
fueled the established utopia surrounding the hippie subculture that nonetheless, as Tom
Wolfe´s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test and Joan Didion´s Slouching Towards Bethelem
would demonstrate, distanced slightly from reality. Despite describing a similar reality and
being both renowned representatives of the literary movement “New Journalism”, their
outlooks on the hippie figure are somewhat contrasting, as a result of their disparate
prejudices, concerns, and world views.

For Didion, the sixties signify the beginning of US society’s fragmentation ( “atomization”),
the shift from the traditional American values and a strong family unit to a senseless, drug-
dependent reality. Via a series of stories that illustrate the attempt of the hippie community to
self-anesthetize-in order to cope with the tumultuous political and social context and with the
oppressive lifestyle of their parents-, she emphasizes the lost notion of family, home, and
ultimately, belonging. This is precisely what Didion fears: the demise of the moral and social
principles with which she has been raised. A fear, an anxiety that leads her to capture the
Haight-Ashbury neighborhood as she sees it, as the foster home of a community of vandals,
dropouts, and drug addicts. She illustrates this decay by means of a gradation based on the
sense of aimlessness of the hippies and the excessive and reckless consumption of drugs
that culminates with the portrayal of a toddler that has been fed LSD by her mother.
Therefore, in conjunction with her distinctive coolness, the book exudes subjectivity.
However, it appears her experience in San Francisco does modify her perspective on the
hippie movement. She continues to despise the subculture, the one she regards as a
manifestation of “social hemorrhaging”, but no longer blames the members of the
community, at least completely, for repudiating the system:” We had somehow neglected to
tell these children the rules of the game was happened to be playing”. She realized it was
the system itself the one that turned it back on the incipient rebels that without a sense of
direction strived for belonging in a world that had abandoned them; a world that had failed to
conserve the old social contract and likewise, to provide a new one: “We were seeing the
desperate attempt of a handful of pathetically unequipped children to create a community in
a social vacuum. Once we had seen these children, we could no longer overlook the
vacuum, no longer pretend that the society’s atomization could be reversed”.
Tom Wolfe´s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, although at times critical, positions itself
sufficiently far from Didion´s scathing cynicism. The reason could not be less straightforward:
it all comes down to their motivation. While Didion writes driven by her angst, by the
necessity of raising awareness towards the national crisis that is ravaging America´s soul;
Wolfe is, more than anything, intrigued.
He presents the audience with the hippie narrative, principally via the figure of Ken Kesey,
leader of the “Merry Pranksters” and of the psychedelic movement. His purpose is to
immerse himself in the thought process of Kesey in order for the reader to fully or at least,
partially comprehend the mind-altering experiences provoked by LSD consumption. He
introduces the reader into the hippie mind, by means of unfinished thoughts and an erratic
and frantic narration that mimics the stream of consciousness of an addict, to the extent,
Wolfe himself appears to have consumed LSD (although he has stated to never has done
so). This literary device is, in addition, assisted by his specific narrative technique: Wolfe
alternates between different perspectives and thereby, precludes the audience from
identifying his standpoint on the movement. Being this characteristic what truly differentiates
his work from that of Didion´s. We cannot be certain whether he truly bolsters the
psychedelic subculture and is in fact, “on the bus”, enabling, therefore, the audience to form
their own opinion regarding the “Merry Pranksters”.

Heavily influenced by her bias, Didion’s Slouching Towards Bethelem presents us with a
caustic and pessimistic description of the hippie community that breaks completely away
from the idealized image engraved in the collective memory. She offers the counterpart of a
generation so broken that is unable to connect with reality. Conversely, Wolfe seems more
concerned with conveying the experiences and thoughts of the movement members than
that of his own. Constituting, therefore, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test a more precise
interpretation of literary journalism. Nonetheless, equally valid both works, they solely
represent two different outlooks on the hippie culture, an integral element of one of the US´s
more tumultuous decades.
What role did universities and university students play in the socio-political changes
of the 1960s?

Willing to defy everything their progenitor’s represented, the younger generations soon
confronted the intrinsic conformity and passiveness of the fifties aware of the increasing
contradictions present in US´s society: the old-standing national revindication of freedom
and equality was being questioned by the rise of the Civil Rights movement and the
pretenses of peace pursuit did not adjust with the steady pecuniary contributions for the
maintenance of the Cold War.

The social tension caused by the Vietnam War, segregation, social discrimination began to
accumulate and like any other major social revolution, the straw that broke the camel’s back
was not, in perspective, as heavy as its counterparts although fortunately, heavy enough to
spark “change”. This moment came with the prohibition of installing student stalls on a street
bordering the Berkeley university campus, where publications of a political and social nature
were exhibited, and funds were collected for social causes.

Students answered with numerous demonstrations, teach-ins, and marches; and

progressively, the Free Speech Movement commenced to develop. After an endless tug-of-
war, students finally gained the democratic right of free speech on their campus. Although a
key milestone in universities, Berkley´s revolt, the first to mobilize such vast young masses,
supposed much more than the accomplishment of free expression. It represented a
qualitative leap forward in the youth uprising paradigm.

The goals presented by the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) in the Port Huron
Statement (1962) finally started to consolidate among campuses while the lines that would
define social and political activism took shape. Nonetheless, it would be the Vietnam War the
greatest catalyst in the social rebellion, taking place demonstrations of massive dimensions
(e.g: Chicago, 1968).

Numerous students become aware of the absurd function of universities: an omnipotent

lobby solely destined to the mass-production of leaders and knowledge, but completely
detached from social and political issues. Typically, students targeted solely the
accomplishment of individual goals. What is more, these egoistical pursuits were developed
on numerous occasions with a passive attitude and without a glance of creativity, curiosity,
or even a willingness to learn. Thereby, climbing up the social ladder, entertainment and
prestige seem to be the priorities of the majority. The solution for this issue consists of
transforming the university into a veritable mecca of knowledge, intellectual development,
and discussion through the promotion of debates and the exchange of disparate opinions
and perspectives. In addition, it is essential the building of liaisons with activist and
humanitarian movements, the dissociation from the administrative machinery in order to
entrust the management of the institution to teachers and students, and finally, the
incorporation of social issues into the university syllabus for all students independently of
their degree.
 Tightly connected to social, political, and economical spheres, universities play a central
role in the mobilization of the younger generations. Thus, during the sixties, students
represented the driving force for change, attaining major accomplishments regarding the
liberty of speech, the civil rights movement, and the opposition to the Vietnam War.