Wednesday, July 15, 2009

I Sing the Body Eclectic

"..I speak the pass-word primeval..."

Well, not exactly. Still can't comment in my own blog, apparently a Blogger issue, but can't discount Baby Blogger Bumbling yet. I apologize-working on it.


To continue last week's speculation, during my down-time I picked up "Walt Whitman's America, A Cultural Biography", by David S. Reynolds. Whitman aligned himself, in "Song of Myself " as well as other places, with loaferism, an actual subculture in opposition to the prevailing Puritan/Industrial mindset of 1840's America. Of course, he also got fired from more than one newspaper job for "laziness". So I guess it's in the eye of the beholder, but just as today's global MegaCorps seek to manage our time for us, so the Romantic/Beat/Hippie/Slacker /Punk ethos has always provided an alternative viewpoint.
Ann Powers, in "Weird Like Us, My Bohemian America", has a more modern take on it. A music critic at the New York Times and Village Voice, she explores, among other things, the alternative economy.

A longtime friend, at
Zippidy Doo Da, a very interesting blog from a Large Red State, also suggests “World Made by Hand,” by James Kunstler, and Kevin Phillips' “Bad Money”. Are there other " Slacker Manuals" out there? Baby Blogger promises a review or two, after finishing a couple of these. But he'd better get back to his own "alternative economy".

1 comment:

  1. Ze Grate;
    I didn't mean to say that Bad Money and The Long Emergency were slacker handbooks, rather they may illustrate why and how our society tilts the way it does.
    For directions, I would suggest something like John D. Mcdonald's Travis McGee novels, or the alternative lifestyle of Skink in Carl Hiasson's books.

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