The Anti-Anti-Utopian Generation, 1934-43

Anti-Anti-Utopians are a betwixt-and-between generation; its members look upon the competing ideologies and discourses of older and younger generations with a certain amount of detachment -- sometimes cynical, sometimes anxious, sometimes humorous. This doesn't mean they're un-idealistic. Thomas Pynchon, Morris Dickstein, Woody Allen, for example: They critique the excesses of the Establishment and the counterculture alike, and in so doing articulate -- in a negative fashion -- an ideal. No wonder Anti-Anti-Utopians tend to admire Adorno so much.

Yet the ideas, actions, and cultural productions of the Anti-Anti-Utopians -- who were in their teens and 20s in the Fifties (1954-63, from the end of WWII to the end of Korea, and from Elvis to the Beatles; not to be confused with the '50s), and their 20s and 30s in the Sixties (1964-73, the Vietnam War era, one of disorienting change in all areas of public and private life; not to be confused with the '60s) -- would be enormously influential on the Boomers. When we think of the Sixties, we think of feminists (Gloria Steinem), Yippies (Abbie Hoffman), Black Panthers (Eldridge Cleaver), gentle bearded freaks (Jim Henson) and violent ones (Charles Manson, Theodore Kaczynski), antiwar activists (John Kerry), gonzo journalists and far-out novelists (Hunter S. Thompson, Harlan Ellison, Ken Kesey, Don DeLillo, Thomas Pynchon, Robert Stone, Thomas McGuane, Samuel R. Delany). We think of the films of Woody Allen; the comedy of George Carlin and Richard Pryor; and the songwriting of Gerry Goffin, Sonny Bono, and Carole King. All Anti-Antis.

The Sixties also saw the comeback of Elvis (b. 1935); the success of soul and funk (Marvin Gaye, Smokey Robinson, Tina Turner, George Clinton, Otis Redding, Aretha Franklin, Curtis Mayfield, Isaac Hayes); and the apotheosis of folk and folk rock (Joan Baez; Bob Dylan; Joni Mitchell; Peter, Paul & Mary; also members of the Mamas and the Papas, Simon and Garfunkel, The Byrds, The Grateful Dead). All Anti-Antis. The world-historical triumph of rock, of course, was also a Sixties phenomenon: Besides the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, members of The Doors, The Velvet Underground, The Beach Boys, and Jefferson Airplane were born from 1934-43; so were Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Captain Beefheart, and Frank Zappa. 'Nuff said.

Members of the Anti-Anti-Utopian Generation include:

* Fredric Jameson, Ralph Nader, Gloria Steinem, R. Crumb, Bill Moyers, Wendell Berry, Carl Sagan, Charles Manson, Joan Didion, Jimmy Swaggart, Gloria Steinem, Richard Dawkins, Renata Adler, Eldridge Cleaver, John McCain, Abbie Hoffman, Jim Henson, Richard Posner, Colin Powell, Wolfman Jack, Michael Walzer, Morris Dickstein, Stanley Fish, Hunter S. Thompson, Robert D. Putnam, Phil Knight, Ted Turner, Lewis Lapham, Gary Gygax, Evel Knievel, Jared Diamond, Robert Christgau, Charles Murray, Robert Nozick, Lee Harvey Oswald, Daniel Dennett, Tom Brokaw, Ted Koppel, Bruce Lee, Spalding Gray, Jesse Jackson, Peter Coyote, Michael Eisner, Theodore Kaczynski, Hendrik Hertzberg, Howard Gardner, Garrison Keillor, Larry Flynt, Paul Wolfowitz, Nolan Bushnell, Newt Gingrich, John Kerry, Peter Guralnick, Joseph E. Stiglitz, George W.S. Trow. Václav Havel. Julia Kristeva. Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama.

* Harlan Ellison, E. Annie Proulx, Ken Kesey, Don DeLillo, Joseph Wambaugh, Thomas Pynchon, Robert Stone, Judy Blume, Thomas McGuane, James Lee Burke, Ivan Doig, Jim Harrison, Robert Pinsky, Russell Banks, Anne Rice, John Irving, Philip Caputo, John Edgar Wideman, Maxine Hong Kingston, Erica Jong, Michael Crichton, Louise Glüick, Samuel R. Delany, Larry McMurtry, Ishmael Reed, Sam Shepard, Cecil Brown, Margaret Atwood, David Denby.

* Elvis Presley, Gerry Goffin, Leonard Cohen, Sonny Bono, Herb Alpert, John Phillips, Jerry Lee Lewis, Roy Orbison, Bobby Darin, Buddy Holly, Philip Glass, Frankie Valli, Merle Haggard, Waylon Jennings, Etta James, Kenny Rogers, Eddie Cochran. J.J. Cale, Roberta Flack, Ray Manzarek, Neil Sedaka, Marvin Gaye, Judy Collins, Frankie Avalon, Grace Slick, Tina Turner, Gene Pitney, Smokey Robinson, Herbie Hancock, George Clinton, Nancy Sinatra, Frank Zappa, Joan Baez, Captain Beefheart, Neil Diamond, Mike Love, Ritchie Valens, Bob Dylan, Otis Redding, Cass Elliott, Paul Simon, Art Garfunkel, Carole King, Lou Reed, Aretha Franklin, Barbra Streisand, Tammy Wynette, Paul Kantner, Curtis Mayfield, Brian Wilson, Roger McGuinn, Tom Rush, Jerry Garcia, Isaac Hayes, Sterling Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, Jorma Kaukonen, Michael Nesmith, Peter Tork, Jim Croce, Janis Joplin, Maceo Parker, Barry Manilow, Marty Balin, Jim Morrison, John Denver, Michael Davis, Joni Mitchell, Randy Newman.

* Sydney Pollack, Woody Allen, Francis Ford Coppola, Ridley Scott, James L. Brooks, Nora Ephron, Martin Scorsese, Michael Mann, Terrence Malick. Also: Ralph Bakshi, Abbas Kiarostami, Hayao Miyazaki, David Cronenberg.

* George Carlin, Bill Cosby, Richard Pryor, Tony Hendra, Michael O'Donoghue, Chris Miller.

* George Segal, Alan Arkin, Shirley Jones, Shirley MacLaine, Charles Grodin, Peter Boyle, Lee Remick, Alan Alda, Burt Reynolds, Dennis Hopper, Robert Redford, Michael Landon, Mary Tyler Moore, Warren Beatty, Billy Dee Williams, Jack Nicholson, Morgan Freeman, Dustin Hoffman, Jane Fonda, Natalie Wood, Jean Seberg, John Voight, Sal Mineo, Lee Majors, Harvey Keitel, Michael J. Pollard, Peter Fonda, Chuck Norris, Al Pacino, Martin Sheen, Raquel Welch, Faye Dunaway, Nick Nolte, Sandra Dee, Harrison Ford, Madeline Kahn, Penny Marshall, Annette Funicello, Sharon Tate, Blythe Danner, Joe Pesci, Christopher Walken, Robert De Niro.

According to Foreign Policy and Britain's Prospect Magazine, the Top 10 public intellectuals in 2005 were: Noam Chomsky (1928), Umberto Eco (1932), Richard Dawkins (1941), Vaclav Havel (1936), Christopher Hitchens (1949), Paul Krugman (1953), Jurgen Habermas (1929), Amartya Sen (1933), Jared Diamond (1937), and Salman Rushdie (1947). Three Postmoderns, Four Anti-Antis, Three Boomers. Let's put this silly "Silent Generation" notion to rest.

UPDATE: Authors of books described by the New York Times Book Review in 2006 as "the single best work of American fiction published in the last 25 years": Don DeLillo (1936, for "Underworld," "White Noise," and "Libra"); John Kennedy Toole (1937, for "A Confederacy of Dunces"); Raymond Carver (1938, for "Where I'm Calling From"); and Marilynne Robinson (1943, for "Housekeeping"). Anti-Anti novelists like DeLillo, Kesey, Wambaugh, Pynchon, McGuane, Toole, and Hunter S. Thompson, to mention some of my favorites, are (a) funnier, in general, than Postmoderns; and (b) more hopeful about the possibility of a radically improved social order or American way of life emerging at some point, even if they're (understandably) unwilling to articulate what that order might look like, except in negative ways.

Like Woody Allen, R. Crumb, Renata Adler, Abbie Hoffman, George W.S. Trow, and Bob Dylan, these novelists are less tangled up in the liberal mindset than some of their immediate predecessors -- they're anarchistic, I guess is the best way to put it. They get a whole lot of illiberal enjoyment out of the tensions, uncertainties, and paradoxes of postwar American life; and the aesthetic experience of reading their fiction is somehow a foretaste of the unnamed, indescribable world they fervently believe is possible... despite the failure of every historical attempt to build a perfect society.

Anti-Anti-Utopians -- let me know what you think! Leave a comment on this post or email me.