It's Hip to be Square
“Sticks and stones will break my bones ….” Recently I was called a “Hippie.” Or it may have been “old Hippie” (are there any young ones?).
This is what happened: I wrote a piece for a magazine about the late Jack Kerouac’s drunken appearance on William F. Buckley's talk show, “Firing Line.” A reader was offended, so offended that he wrote a Letter to the Editor. My crime? I took the time to write an article (and the magazine the gall to publish) about a loser (his opinion) like Kerouac who the letter writer believes created the Hippies (he did not). The writer implied I was 75 (I’m 71) and a Hippie (I am not).
And Kerouac wasn’t a Hippie — he was a Beat — though he might reject that title — depending on how it was framed.
The whole affair set me thinking about labeling of eras, movements, generations, etc.
When did the so-called Beat Generation begin and end? Kerouac’s’ On the Road was published in 1957 but was largely based on events that took place ten years earlier. Can we even say there was a Beat Generation? Or was it simply a movement of a few dozen writers and poets?
And the Hippies? The Buckley episode aired in ‘68, one year after a season labelled The Summer of Love, and a year before Woodstock. Was ‘68 the apex of the movement?
Culture embraces— even needs such labels: Beats, Hippies, The Greatest Generation, Boomers, The John Paul II Generation, etc.
But back to Kerouac—he wasn’t a loser. He may have been sick (alcoholism), but he should be admired for (which some critics have faulted) how he loved and cared for his mother—evidence abounds in his journals and letters.
Hmmm, I guess that does make him “hip,” if to be hip is to have an attitude or stance to what is considered square or prude.
As the Huey Lewis song goes, It’s Hip to be Square.