I'm thinking a little older than the 60's but I've ran into this talking to some of the older Emeritus professors I met and this is something I think isn't talked about enough. There was for a certain section of older white Boomers/extremely young Silent Gen. this real energy to the rapid rise and prosperity of America that you could just do all kinds of crazy shit and the world was your oyster. If any of your crazy schemes and travels didn't work out or you had money problems, then your brother or whoever will hook you up with a good union factory job so that you could get back to a stable income and health insurance, while you planned your new scheme to backpack across Afghanistan and though the Himalayas until you find a remote monastery to try to join and become a Buddhist monk.
Hunter S. Thompson wrote about this when reflecting on Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas. I found it labeled as "previously unpublished" in the Gonzo Papers vol 1.
Which gets down to a final point about Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas. I have called it, only half sarcastically, "a vile epitaph for the Drug Culture of the Sixties," and I think it is. This whole twisted saga is a sort of Atavistic Endeavor, a dream-trip into the past--however recent--that was only half sucessful. I think we both understood, all along, that we were running a hell of a risk by laying a sixties trip on Las Vegas in 1971 . . . and that neither one of us would ever pass this way again.
[...] Because it was nice to be loose and crazy with a good credit card in a time when it was possible to run totally wild in Las Vegas and then get paid for writing a book about it . . . and it occurs to me that I probably just made it, just under the wire and the deadline. Nobody will dare admit this kind of behavior in print if Nixon wins again in `72.
The Swine are gearing down for a serious workout this time around. Four more years of Nixon means four more years of John Mitchell--and four more years of John Mitchell means another decade or more of bureaucratic fasicsm that will be so entrenched, by 1976, that nobody will feel up to fighting it. We will feel too old by then, too beaten, and by then even the Myth of the Road will be dead--if only for lack of exercise. There will not be any wild-eyed, dope-sucking anarchists driving around the country in fireapple red convertibles if Nixon wins again in `72.
[...] So much, then, for The Road--and for the last possibilities of running amok in Las Vegas & living to tell the tale.
I got extremely jealous when reading Thompson's Hells Angels because back then in the USA working 3 months a year and collecting unemployment for 3 more allowed you to buy (and maintain and drive) an extremely big motorycycle and a pile of drugs and just hang out with your horrible friends
Of course the system was crumbling even then, there is a subtle shift towards serious drug running even within the time frame of the book.
IDK, this sounds strongly income-dependent, but I suppose it's also not something I'm fit to try my hand at. I'm too autistic to be able to manage social matters anyways.
I'm thinking a little older than the 60's but I've ran into this talking to some of the older Emeritus professors I met and this is something I think isn't talked about enough. There was for a certain section of older white Boomers/extremely young Silent Gen. this real energy to the rapid rise and prosperity of America that you could just do all kinds of crazy shit and the world was your oyster. If any of your crazy schemes and travels didn't work out or you had money problems, then your brother or whoever will hook you up with a good union factory job so that you could get back to a stable income and health insurance, while you planned your new scheme to backpack across Afghanistan and though the Himalayas until you find a remote monastery to try to join and become a Buddhist monk.
Hunter S. Thompson wrote about this when reflecting on Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas. I found it labeled as "previously unpublished" in the Gonzo Papers vol 1.
I got extremely jealous when reading Thompson's Hells Angels because back then in the USA working 3 months a year and collecting unemployment for 3 more allowed you to buy (and maintain and drive) an extremely big motorycycle and a pile of drugs and just hang out with your horrible friends
Of course the system was crumbling even then, there is a subtle shift towards serious drug running even within the time frame of the book.
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:this: they're insane
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I understand that, I think what I was expressing was that it was a lot easier, more accessible, and less risky then, which meant more people did it.
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IDK, this sounds strongly income-dependent, but I suppose it's also not something I'm fit to try my hand at. I'm too autistic to be able to manage social matters anyways.
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This is the story of all the people in Kerouac's circle that were actually interesting.