Word: rockness
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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They are, for the most part, youth who consider themselves "apolitical": former New Leftists, hippies, heads, cultists of Eastern philosophy, and communalists; some members of the rock scene, the underground press, the encounter movement, and the free universities. They could be many, for they draw their ranks from the children of the Great Middle Class, who are strung out in adolescence between a permissive childhood and a regimented adulthood, who have been in on American quantitative abundance and want out. So far, though, they are relatively...
...novel caught on despite the rotten reviews, all of which were correct. It is true that the novel is badly structured, has few real characters, is unevenly written, and is totally unbelievable for the last hundred and fifty pages. But it is probably the finest post-rock novel yet written...
...expression of pure energy crystallized in print. If rock and roll is one of the most important cultural phenomena of the last ten years, it seems to have had little or no influence on recent fiction, other than stealing away most of our potential novelists. (Most of the likely writers born in the forties seem to have become rock and roll stars instead.) Very few recent novels read as though their authors had been exposed to any rock...
...exceptions I have come across are the works of Richard Brautigan, Hall of Mirrors by Robert Stone, possibly Pynchon's Crying a Lot 49, and Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me. It is not Farina's occasional reference to Buddy Holly that makes him post-rock, but rather the impression one gets from the novel that it was written with the Stones constantly playing in the background. The book is driven by a constant mindless throb of energy...
THERE were drag queens mingling with society matrons, rock 'n' roll blasting through the halls where Rembrandt and Velasquez once reigned in hushed glory, and costumes ranging from fringed buckskin to China Machado chic. "Peace Now" buttons blossomed on satin evening gowns. Pamphlets denouncing David Rockefeller, Viet Nam and the art market were dispensed along with cocktails and tiny sandwiches. Outside, pickets protested the lack of black and women artists in the show. Manhattan's venerable Metropolitan Museum had never before been host to anything quite like it, a fact that was duly lamented by diehard traditionalists...