Here’s an interesting read from Christopher Hitchens on hippies:

Eleanor Agnew’s lovely memoir of this movement of primal innocence is at once honest and hilarious. She recaptures the period with unerring skill: a period when the Apollo mission had shown us our fragile, blue planetary home from outer space, thus promoting (first) ”The Whole Earth Catalog” and (second) a mentality that despised the science and innovation necessary for the taking of that photograph in the first place.

RTWT

Jack Abbott did the universe a big favor and threw himself a private necktie party. Stormin’ Norman Mailer issued his usual predictable numbskullian apologia:

“His life was tragic from beginning to end,” Mr. Mailer said yesterday in a prepared statement. “I never knew a man who had a worse life.”

Don’t get out much, Norm?

Actually the tragedy was for those who had the misfortune to cross his path. And, yes, perhaps few had worse lives, but it was worse only in the sense that it was a life lived extremely badly. He wasn’t misunderstood, except by the Norman Mailers of the world–he was just a thug who could occasionally put words together. I wonder how long it will be before Mailer’s fellow sob sisters start lamenting his passing?

Anyway, if a beast exists, I’m pretty sure that Jack Abbott is now truly in the belly of it. And Mr. Mailer may not be too far, in time or morality, from joining him.