Word: grasp
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...life he perceives that man pays a deadly price whenever he seeks to dominate another because the other invariably rises up to destroy his oppresser. The oppresser can never hope for a moment's peace. His enemies are constantly behind his back, waiting for an opportune moment to grasp at the tyrant's throat. Baldwin makes it his self-appointed mission to convince people, Black and White, that the price of class antagonism is not worth its benefits--benefits which in the end come only to nothingness...
...that is why Charles Perry's book is as frustrating as it is exciting, a history of a revolution in thought that can give one a factual knowledge of the Haight-Ashbury movement but through which the reader can only vaguely grasp what IT was all about...
...Prof. Timothy Leary fueled the "Hashberry" from start to finish. Publicly-advertised acid tests--group tripping experiences organized by novelist Ken ("One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest") Kesey and his Merry Pranksters--spread the wonder drug from the province of a few enlightened intellectuals to the grasp of any who wanted to know...
Perry, now an editor at the yuppified Rolling Stone, has captured the outline of a moment of American spiritual rapture. If you read the book with a glass of electric Kool-Aid, you might be able to grasp the whole picture...
...that, among other things, witnessed the birth of the Class of 1989. With teen exploitation flicks and Madison Avenue cashing in on the hippie fad, with even a Gray Line tour through the Haight-Ashbury, the movement exploded beyond the bounds of its neighborhood, destroying itself in its own grasp with success yet somehow managing to spread an influence far beyond the San Francisco Bay. The greatest hippie event of all took place two years and 3000 miles away from the Haight's height, at Woodstock, and alternative thought echoed through education and the media...