"..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".
Ze Grate;
ReplyDeleteI 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.