Literary Representations of Countercultures
Literary representations of countercultures primarily focus on the youth movements that emerged in North America during the late 1960s, which sought alternatives to mainstream cultural norms. This counterculture championed values such as personal expression, egalitarianism, and authenticity, and its literature often fused high and low cultural forms, alongside various multicultural influences. Writers from this era, such as Tom Wolfe and Allen Ginsberg, captured the essence of these movements through both fiction and innovative nonfiction, reflecting a strong disdain for conformity and authority.
Key literary influences include the Beat Generation, whose major figures like Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs shaped the counterculture's narrative. The counterculture's embrace of themes like antiwar activism, civil rights, and personal freedom is evident in works that blend reporting with personal voice, a style exemplified by journalists like Hunter S. Thompson. Additionally, fiction writers such as Kurt Vonnegut and Richard Brautigan offered satirical and imaginative critiques of societal norms. Overall, the literature from this period not only chronicled the counterculture's aspirations and struggles but also influenced future literary expressions and cultural conversations.
Literary Representations of Countercultures
Introduction
Literature has always given a voice to those disenchanted with their cultures. The word “countercultures” in the context of North American literature, however, refers primarily to the youth movements of the late 1960s, which strove for an alternative to the established culture. Members of this counterculture valued experience, personal expression, egalitarianism, self-examination, and authenticity; their literature blends high and low culture, multicultural influences, Americana, avant-garde forms, and voices from the past.
The counterculture combined a quest for intense experience with a utopian desire to renew the world. These desires were expressed in art, music, and literature, and in activities such as antiwar and civil rights protests, mystical exploration, drugs, and the sexual revolution. The counterculture experienced considerable success in redefining culture, changing perceptions and practices in the realms of art, music, politics, education, religion, and social mores. Political protest, street theater, and communally produced art reflected the democratic and antiauthoritarian impulse of the counterculture’s artistic acts. There is a literature of the counterculture: produced by it, written about it, or adopted by it.
Influences, Roots, and Borrowings
Jay Stevens writes in Storming Heaven: LSD and the American Dream (1987): “in many respects the hippies were second-generation Beats.” Although the counterculture generation was more colorful, more optimistic, and more political, it shared with the Beats a distaste for authority and conformity. Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs, major Beat writers, became leading counterculture figures. Jack Kerouac's 1957 On the Road, based on his relationship with fellow Beat poet Neal Cassady, is a stream-of-consciousness letter about the two protagonists' travels across the country and the narrator's thoughts about freedom and conformity.
The counterculture also brought popularity to kindred spirits from the past. Ginsberg drew attention to English Romantic poets William Blake and Percy Bysshe Shelley. Even more popular was Hermann Hesse, a German novelist and poet whose antiwar sentiments, Eastern mysticism, and psychological probings appealed to the counterculture.
The fantasy books of J. R. R. Tolkien (The Hobbit, 1937, and The Lord of the Rings, 1954–1955) were favorites in the counterculture; in general, fantasy and science fiction appealed to the counterculture’s exuberant imagination. The counterculture was influenced by the Beats, the literature the Beats advocated, and by such writers as Tolkien; in turn, the counterculture influenced such fanciful works as The Butterfly Kid (1967) by Chester Anderson, and Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson’s The Illuminatus Trilogy (1974).
Nonfiction
The most innovative literature produced by the counterculture was passionately personal and experimental nonfiction. In the 1960s, this nonfiction flourished in the underground newspapers, in rock-and-roll magazines such as Rolling Stone, and in satiric publications such as Paul Krassner’s The Realist. This nonfiction, in a bold stroke, dropped the mask of objectivity in journalism and used the personal voice and point of view of the journalist in describing events. Counterculture journals published manifestos, guerrilla journalism (ranging from political exposé to advice on finding free food), and personal narrative. The late 1960s and early 1970s saw the book equivalents of underground journalism: Revolution for the Hell of It (1968) and Steal This Book (1971) by Abbie Hoffman; James S. Kunen’s The Strawberry Statement: Notes of a College Revolutionary (1969); and Do It: Scenarios of the Revolution (1970) by Jerry Rubin. Important memoirs also chronicle the time, from Emmett Grogan’s Ringolevio: A Life Played for Keeps (1972) to Heavenly Breakfast (1979) by Samuel R. Delany. Personal and subjective narration mixed with factual reporting became known as new journalism. Classic examples may be found in the works of Tom Wolfe, Norman Mailer, Joan Didion, and Hunter S. Thompson. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1971), a blend of fact and fiction, is a prime example of what became known as gonzo journalism.
Less experimental, but no less countercultural, Betty Friedan published The Feminist Mystique (1963), a critique of twentieth-century gender roles based on her research and analysis, because she could not find a magazine that would publish her work. James Baldwin similarly critiqued American racism toward African Americans in two essays that he published as part of his collection The Fire Next Time (1963).
Fiction
Major public figures of the counterculture produced little fiction; Ken Kesey’s popular One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest was published as a novel in 1962. Burroughs continued steady publication of his antiestablishment works. Three major writers who participated little in public events of the counterculture but who examine countercultural themes are Kurt Vonnegut, Richard Brautigan, and Thomas Pynchon. Vonnegut’s novels, especially Cat’s Cradle (1963) and Slaughterhouse-Five: Or, The Children’s Crusade, a Duty-Dance with Death (1969), offer satire, imagination, and hope in an absurd world. Brautigan’s poetry and prose use evocative and surreal imagery to critique everyday life. Pynchon, the best and most challenging writer of the counterculture, makes brilliant, encyclopedic observations about the society of his time in V. (1963), The Crying of Lot 49 (1966), and Gravity’s Rainbow (1973). Pynchon’s Vineland (1990) is a bittersweet look at the graying members of the counterculture and their challenge to find hope in the years of the Reagan Administration. Alice Walker's novel The Color Purple (1982), published during Reagan's first term, is countercultural in its depiction of African American women as complex characters who face sexism and racism with strength and courage.
Bibliography
Dickstein, Morris. Gates of Eden: American Culture in the Sixties. New York: Basic Books, 1977.
Lohnes, Kate. "9 Countercultural Books." Encyclopaedia Britannica, www.britannica.com/list/9-countercultural-books. Accessed 27 Sept. 2019.
Peck, Abe. Uncovering the Sixties: The Life and Times of the Underground Press. New York: Pantheon Books, 1985.
Sayres, Sohnya, et al., eds. The Sixties Without Apology. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984.
Stevens, Jay. Storming Heaven: LSD and the American Dream. New York: The Atlantic Monthly Press, 1987.
Whitmer, Peter O., with Bruce Van Wyngarden. Aquarius Revisited: Seven Who Created the Counterculture That Changed America. New York: Macmillan, 1987.