For Theodore Roszak, who coined the term in his 1969 study The Making of a Counter Culture, the counter culture referred to the disaffected youth of the 1960s whose interests “in the psychology of alienation, oriental mysticism, psychedelic drugs, and communitarian experiments comprise a cultural constellation that radically diverges from values and assumptions that have been in the mainstream of our society at least since the Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth century.”

Over time, the counter culture has become associated with a very broad range of radical cultural and political movements of the time: civil-rights and gay-rights movements, feminism, the anti–Vietnam War movement, and the free-speech movement, to name a few. However, Roszak excludes most of these groups from his definition due to their tendency to use conventional political strategies to achieve their aims. He instead confines the term to a minority of young adults and adolescents—mostly from white, middle-class backgrounds—who used unconventional, frequently nonpolitical means to dissent against the social restrictions and repressions that emerged in the mainstream society of the 1950s. This group is best represented by the hippie culture and its figureheads, such as Allen Ginsberg, Abbie Hoffman, and Ken Kesey.

Ginsberg is especially notable, as he represents a crossover figure from the Beat movement from which the hippie counter culture evolved. While the influence of the Beat generation on the counter culture of the 1960s is universally acknowledged, there are important differences. Particularly, the counter culture replaced the Beats’ darker, existentialist attitude with a sense of playfulness and a celebration of the possibility of social change. As Scott MacFarlane observed, “the hippie belief that ‘we can change the world’ most distinguished the counterculture from the Beat sentiment that preceded it.”

At the same time, the influence of the Beat movement should not be understated. Ginsberg’s Howl (1956) is considered a foundational text for the counter culture. And Jack Kerouac’s On the Road (1957) provided a sort of guidebook for the nomadic lifestyle often practiced by hippies. Like the Beat movement, the counter culture featured a return to spirituality as opposed to the secularism of prior social movements, which tended to view religion as an obstacle rather than an aid to social progress. Along with Ginsberg and Kerouac’s poetic representations of Oriental mysticism, Alan Watts’s dissemination of Zen thought had a significant impact on the counter culture. Zen philosophy’s passive, Naturalistic approach to encountering the world especially appealed to counter-cultural concerns about ecology and communal lifestyles. Watts’s Westernized and psychologized version of Zen Buddhism provided guidelines for engaging the world through direct, subjective experience rather than through the intellect.

Another form of counter-cultural spirituality emerged through the use of psychedelic drugs—particularly potent psychedelics such as LSD, psilocybin, mescaline, and peyote. These drugs were believed to induce a profound change in consciousness that was often thought to allow a direct personal experience of the divine. The most famous proponent of the use of psychedelics for spiritual pursuits was the psychologist Timothy Leary. Though his early research into psilocybin mushrooms and LSD focused on the applications of the drugs in psychotherapy, he soon began to emphasize the mystical and spiritual qualities of the psychedelic experience. He even founded a religion, the League for Spiritual Discovery, in which he attempted to declare LSD a holy sacrament. More-secularly-minded users saw the potential for initiating social change through the alteration in personal consciousness that psychedelics made possible. Kesey, for example, led a group called the Merry Pranksters, who staged large parties, called “acid tests,” during which LSD-spiked punch was distributed to the attendees. The LSD, along with psychedelic music, films, and light shows, was meant to create a mass change in consciousness.

Politically, the counter culture was represented by groups such as Hoffman and Jerry Rubin’s Yippies, or Youth International Party. Though they shared common causes with many other political groups—such as free-speech, antiwar, and social-reform movements—the Yippies distinguished themselves with the use of unconventional methods including pranksterism and guerilla theater. Their anarchistic use of humor to exploit mass media solidified their positions as counterculture icons. On the West Coast, the Diggers used similar techniques to push for social reform, though they avoided media attention and public spectacle.

Though the counter culture of the 1960s is widely recognized to have been best represented by the rock music of the time, certain works of literature played important roles in its emergence and characterization as a cultural movement. Thomas Pynchon’s V. (1962) features an early representation of the counter culture in its depiction of The Whole Sick Crew. The novel’s schlemiel protagonist, Benny Profane, a human yo-yo, exemplifies the nomadic lifestyle of much of the hippie culture. Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1962) offers a protagonist, Randle P. McMurphy, who exemplifies the rebellious aspect of the counter culture in his use of unconventional means to resist the inflexible and repressive agent of dehumanizing authoritarianism, Nurse Ratched. The novel’s narrator, derived from a vision Kesey had under the influence of peyote, is eventually inspired by McMurphy to emerge from the alienation and dehumanization produced by technocratic society. And Richard Brautigan’s Trout Fishing in America (1967, written in 1961) creates a narrative in which the zeitgeist of the counter culture is, itself, the protagonist. Appearing as a character, an action, and a specter that inhabits the whole novel, Trout Fishing in America expresses the spirit of transcendence and liberation for which the counter culture strived.

Other important works of counter-culture literature include Hunter S. Thompson’s Hell’s Angels (1966), an early example of New Journalism in which intersubjectivity and literary techniques are employed to report on events. This technique exemplified the counter culture’s privileging of experience over objectivity. Diane di Prima’s various works of poetry and prose, including Earth Song (1968), Memoirs of A Beatnik (1969), and Revolutionary Letters (1971), reflected the counter culture’s concern with Buddhist spirituality and anarchistic thought. She was also active in several counter-culture projects such as the Diggers group and Leary’s experiments with psychedelics. Herman Hesse’s Siddhartha (1921) and Steppenwolf (1927), though originally published much earlier, had a profound impact on the counter culture of the 1960s because of their explorations of personal alienation and of transcendence through the use of Oriental spiritualism. Depictions of free love and drug use also contributed to Steppenwolf’s countercultural value.

Topics for Discussion and Research

1. The use of psychedelics was an important aspect of the counterculture and thus plays a significant role in its literature. Explore the ways in which literature addresses and/or incorporates the psychedelic experience. For example, examine how the New Journalism approach of Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968) or the Gonzo technique of Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1971) employs intersubjectivity and literary technique to represent psychedelic culture. Or discuss the use of experimental narrative techniques in Brautigan’s Trout Fishing in America or William Burroughs’s Naked Lunch (1959) to reflect the hallucinatory qualities of psychedelics. See Roszak’s discussion of psychedelics in The Making of a Counter Culture.
2. Much like the Beats before them, the counterculture of the 1960s featured a strong spiritual element. Explore the ways in which spirituality—especially Oriental and shamanic traditions—influenced countercultural literary works such as Ishmael Reed’s Mumbo Jumbo (1972) or the poetry of Ginsberg. Alternately, examine how spiritually minded works like Hesse’s Siddhartha or John Neihardt’s Black Elk Speaks (1961) affected countercultural thought. See MacFarlane’s The Hippie Narrative for discussion on spiritual literature that influenced the countercultural movement.
3. Though not strictly countercultural movements, the civil-rights, gay-rights, and feminist movements of the 1960s were often associated with the counterculture. Discuss the impact of the works as well as the activism of writers such as Ralph Ellison, Adrienne Rich, or Diane di Prima on the counterculture. Or locate and analyze the influence of these movements on literary works such as Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest or Rich’s Necessities of Life: Poems, 1962–1965 (1966). See Terry H. Anderson’s The Movement and The Sixties for a detailed study of social activism in the 1960s.
4. Several countercultural works addressed the importance of alternative lifestyles, such as communal living and the transient or nomadic nature of hippie culture. Analyze the significance of communal living in Brautigan’s In Watermelon Sugar (1968). Or examine nomadic existences as represented in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test or Pynchon’s V.
5. The countercultural movement of the 1960s distinguished itself from the earlier Beat movement by the addition of humor and playfulness to its antiauthoritarian, antimainstream stance. Consider the use of humor and play in works such as Brautigan’s Trout Fishing in America, Pynchon’s V., or Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five (1969). How does the humor in these novels reflect the disaffection and alienation felt by the counterculture? See Roszak’s The Making of a Counter Culture. Also see Ronald Sukenick’s Down and In: Life in the Underground for an examination of the counterculture’s antimainstream sensibilities as they are manifested in 1950s and 1960s Greenwich Village.

Resources

Criticism

• Terry H. Anderson, The Movement and The Sixties (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996).
  An extensive study of the various protest movements and social activist groups that emerged in the 1960s.
• Peter Braunstein and Michael William Doyle, eds., Imagine Nation: The American Counterculture of the 1960s and 70s (New York: Routledge, 2002).
  A collection of essays examining the multiple aspects of 1960s and 1970s counterculture, including discussions of communal living, recreational drug use, political activism, and race and gender issues.
• Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (New York: Norton, 1963).
  A groundbreaking feminist text that challenged the social and especially the domestic roles of women in post–World War II America.
• Christopher Gair, The American Counterculture (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007).
  Explores the issues and ideologies of American counterculture from 1945 to 1972—divided into two periods, 1945–1960 and 1960–1972—by analyzing its fiction, music, painting, and film.
• Abbie Hoffman, The Autobiography of Abbie Hoffman (New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 2000).
  Originally published in 1980 as Soon to Be a Major Motion Picture, Hoffman’s autobiography, which he wrote while a fugitive living underground in the late 1970s, is an excellent firsthand chronicle of major countercultural events, including the bizarre Chicago Seven trial and the attempt to levitate the Pentagon to end the Vietnam War.
• Timothy Leary, High Priest (New York: World, 1968).
  Leary’s own chronicle of his League for Spiritual Discovery. An overly zealous but still interesting account of the kind of religiosity that emerged around the use of psychedelic drugs.
• Scott MacFarlane, The Hippie Narrative: A Literary Perspective on the Counterculture (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2007).
  Explores the major aspects of the hippie counterculture as represented in the literature of the time. MacFarlane’s critical study creates a sort of countercultural literary canon, including works such as One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Trout Fishing in America, Siddhartha, and Slaughterhouse-Five.
• Timothy Miller, The Hippies and American Values (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1991).
  Miller’s study resists the temptation to trivialize or denigrate hippie culture and instead seriously considers the contributions of hippie ethics to subsequent American values. Some subjects covered include free presses, sexual liberation, and eco-consciousness.
• James E. Perone, Music of the Counterculture Era (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2004).
  Examines various countercultural issues—the antiwar movement, Black Power, feminism, etc.—through the lens of the popular music of the time.
• Theodore Roszak, The Making of a Counter Culture: Reflections on the Technocratic Society and Its Youthful Opposition (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1969).
  The first and probably still the most thorough sociological examination of the countercultural movement of the 1960s. Written in 1969, in the midst of the counterculture movement, it suffers from the absence of hindsight available to authors of later books.
• Ronald Sukenick, Down and In: Life in the Underground (New York: Beech Tree Books, 1987).
  An account of the underground arts culture inhabiting Greenwich Village, predominantly in the 1950s and 1960s. Sukenick examines this culture and its figures largely through the venues they inhabited.

Categories: Literature

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