As I've been reading The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe, this excerpt really stuck out as capturing the value system of the Merry Pranksters and the youth at large in the 60s. Post your opinions or reactions if you're so inclined.
“Most of them were from middle-class backgrounds, but not upper bourgeois, more petit bourgeois, if that old garbanzo can stand being written down again—homes with Culture but no money or money but no Culture. At least that was the way it struck me, judging by the Beautiful People I knew. Culture, Truth, and Beauty were important to them...“Art is a creed, not a craft,” as somebody said....Young! Immune! Christ, somehow there was enough money floating around in the air so that one could do this thing, live together with other kids—Our own thing!--from our own status sphere, without having to work at a job, and live on our own terms—Us! and people our age!--it was beautiful, it was a...whole feeling, and the straight world never understood it, this thing of one's status sphere and how one was only nineteen, twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two or so and not starting out helpless at the bottom of the ladder, at all, because the hell with the ladder itself—one was already up on a ...level that the straight world was freaking baffled by!” (page 134)
*Italicized text by choice of author.
2 comments:
love this book as you know, glad you're reading it, any person that's ventured into the vast realms of psychedelia should read it. it's amazing to me how tom wolfe is so removed from the events taking place, he only mentions himself as a character in the story once or twice. while ive never been able to find the words for how 'tripping' feels, wolfe just does an incredible job, from his descriptions of the vibrations to just the erratic, non-linear style of writing in the book. i love how reading the sentences has your mind jumping all over the place as if you are right there drinking the kool aid with them. kesey seems like the fucking man. keep reading, definitely gonna enjoy talking about the whole book with you after completion.
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