What is the ultimate novel defining the 60s?

[The Lone Liberal]

My nomination is “Armies of the Night” by Norman Mailer.

It is a shame we could not make it happen. A world with no predators, no one with the power to demean, all existing in love.

POWER TO THE PEOPLE! NEVER TRUST ANYONE YOUNGER THAN THIRTY! (Well the arrow of time you must be flexible. Inside joke for the flower people.)

[alaine]

1. "On the Road" Jack Kerourac?

or was that in the fifties?

edit: published in '57

[Amaya]

2. Ditto

:hi:

[mitchum]

3. ..late 40s and 50s

[caledesi]

15. I second that that...being a 60s person

On the Road...truly inspirational.

[BurtWorm]

4. All the Little Live Things by Wallace Stegner

(I think that's the name) tells the story of the 1960s from the perspective of a crotchety conservative book editor, now retired, living in the wilds of Northern California. He scorns hippies--in particular, a pair he finds squatting on his land--but he shares some of their back to nature ideals. Meanwhile, he develops an intense fatherly affection for a woman of more liberal values who lives next door who comes to a tragic end. Besides being a beautifully written novel, I've never read any story about the sixties that caught the view of the people bewildered by it. I'm used to reading 1960s novels about swinging suburbanites and drugged out rat race dropouts. This book stands back and gives a wider perspective of the changes.

[cherryperry]

5. wait a darn minute

I'm writing as fast as I can!

[wtmusic]

6. Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test

hands down!!!

[BurtWorm]

8. Was that a novel?

I thought that was personal journalism.

[Rick Myers]

36. YES!

Second, anything by Terry Southern

[Rowdyboy]

7. The Magic Garden of Stanley Sweetheart...

by Robert Westbrook. I read it in 1969 at 15. Deals with straight sex, bi-sex, drugs, and an aimless college student. I was in Heaven! Never seen the movie but I've heard it sucks big time.

[argyl]

9. "Electric Kool Aid Acid Test" by Tom Wolfe

about Ken Kesey and His Merry Pranksters. OK, not everyone lived like that or had such experiences but they were available for those who wanted them.

[BurtWorm]

10. That really wasn't a novel

That was journalism. If such a distinction matters.

[mitchum]

12. You're right...it's "New Journalism"...

and it's actually not a very flattering portrayal of the subject

[wtmusic]

13. OK then, be that way

if technically it's not a novel, I nominate:

"Valley of the Dolls" by Jacqueline Susann

[BurtWorm]

14. Yeah!! That one passes inspection!

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

27. Valley of the Dolls is a good choice, but The Ugly American

is better, IMHO.

[mitchum]

11. "Midnight Cowboy" James Leo Herlihy

[caledesi]

16. Midnight Cowboy - by far the BEST film ever made.

Dustin Hoffman was awesome....I still view it once in awhile...to bring me back to reality. DH was awesome!

[Jeebo]

17. "Stranger in a Strange Land"

How about Robert A. Heinlein's "Stranger in a Strange Land"? I know it was in the early '60s, but it turned the word "grok" into a household word and helped to sort of set the pop-culture tone for the decade. Am I showing my age here?

Ron

[madrchsod]

21. great book

i have read all of heinlein` books..your as old as you feel...

[Lorien]

34. and also

"The man who fell to earth".

[the_sam]

43. My favorite book of all time

Thou art God! ;-)

[jpgray]

18. "The Man in the High Castle"

Great novel.

[I AM SPARTACUS]

19. Red Badge of Courage

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

26. ummmm, wrong 60's I think

1960's he meant, I believe, but I agree with the 1860's

[I AM SPARTACUS]

30. I always DO that after...

never mind...

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

31. Okay... Ivanhoe... best book of the 1660's

let's get all the 60's covered.

[I AM SPARTACUS]

37. ummm...how about Voltaire's "Candide"

Ivanhoe - set in late 12th century (not 60's), written in early 19th...

[PinkTiger]

38. Nope. 1660s is

The Diary of Samuel Pepys. Hands down.

[I AM SPARTACUS]

42. oh, I dunno...Milton's "Paradise Lost", Thomas Hobbes "Leviathan"...

[madrchsod]

20. if you" lived"

thru the 60`s somewhere you came across something that was written by terry southern..my personal fave was "candy" i gave it to a sweet young thing and the rest was history-till we broke-up.....i just went thru his history of his works in the 60`s- no one comes close in defining that time..

[Jalixm]

22. Naked Lunch

Technically came out in 1959, but i dont care. Burroughs is king.

[greatauntoftriplets]

23. Power to the little people!

Ah, I still have the same beliefs I did in the 1960s.

[The Lone Liberal]

28. LOL Is that an inside joke?

:hippie:

[greatauntoftriplets]

32. That I have the same beliefs that I did in the 1960s?

Or that I believe that short people have the same rights as tall people like me?

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

33. I have been forced to come back to many of the beliefs I had

in the 60's... that government is inherently evil, that the US is not the good guy... that the "silent majority" is wrong again... that people are sheep who follow the lies, but tune out the truth

it is friggin scary to think we are doing it again


without Abby Hoffman, William Kuntzler, Jerry Garcia, PigPen and lots and lots more...Jerry Rubin, gone...John Lennon, gone, RFK gone, MLK gone..... how are we going to do it?

[Squeech]

24. The Crying of Lot 49

Thomas Pynchon's salute to the suburbs, Kennedy-era prosperity and paranoia, and just a touch of the then-emerging drug culture.

For the aftermath, see his Vineland.

I'm also very fond of Richard Farina's Been Down So Long, It Looks Like Up to Me, also written well before the decade was over and suffered its Hegelian antithesis.

[The Lone Liberal]

29. Oh man! I had forgotten that one.

What a great story.

[Coffee Coyote]

25. One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest

Ken Kesey was at his peak with this and "Sometimes A Great Notion".

[Aristus]

35. Catch-22.

Still just as relevant. And as funny.

[PinkTiger]

39. "The Drifters," by James Michener

I think he chronicled the 1960s very well in this book, a novel about a group of "love children" and folk singers who travel around the world in a VW bus.

[kid shelleen]

40. Let's not forget

Even Cowgirls Get The Blues.

[PinkTiger]

41. Chocolate Days, Popsicle Weeks by Ed Hannibal

A great love story, but the best part, IMHO, is his description of working summers in an ice cream factory.