In These Times - November 14, 1999
BACKTRACK By Kim Phillips-Fein
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But one by one, the promises made to postwar boys were broken. Outer space, the promised frontier, turned out to be a sad disappointment, "a sterile environment, not a place where women and children could or would want to settle." When "their war" finally came, it was Vietnam, which did not provide the secure sense of mission offered by World War 11. "Even if an emergency airlift of fatherly officers had provided better battlefield guidance, it could not have rescued a battle misguided from the start. Good national leaders, good fathers, wouldn't have deployed their sons to such a war in the first place." Things just got worse for men. They lost their jobs in the '70s and early '80s; then their wives went out and got work - and sometimes even lives -- of their own.
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I should stay out of this, since I haven't read the book, but asked whether it was any good. If the above is accurate, then Susan Faludi is about forty years late and may be beyond the reach of our best efforts.
Like I said, if this is accurate, then she needs help reading the cultural artifacts of my youth. The lessons should be more than evident in any examination of the popular discourse and culture from the period say mid-50s to late 60s--my wonder bread years of sex, drugs, and violence.
The best way to re-align Susan's misguided understanding of what growing up in the period was like, would be this.
1. Read some old Mad Magazines. 2. Listen to a CD re-issue of Lenny Bruce. 3. Leaf through a collection of Ramparts. 4. Pursue the underground Comix, and scan the Berkeley Barb. 5. Now, smoke a joint and re-consider the book.
My tentative conclusion is, if you go looking for bone-head, clueless men, you will find them.
Chuck Grimes