You know you’re in the ’60s when you hear these voices: there’s wit but no irony; there’s hopelessness but not jadedness. People talk about dying, going to jail, fighting injustice, smoking pot. (And–back to the pictures–a lot of people get naked.) There are free spirits in the book–a guy splashing in the Baja surf, the subversive grin of Abbie Hoffman–but mostly there’s a deep sense of sadness. The ’60s were really the decade of disillusionment. “The realization that there isn’t going to be any turning point” is how Janis Joplin put it for herself. “There isn’t going to be any next-month-it’ll-be-better, next f—ing year, next f—ing life… You just got to look around you and say, So this is it.”
