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Mar 12, 2020dissymissylessy rated this title 4 out of 5 stars
" Whatever their social purpose of position, the Silent acknowledged the unstoppability of G.I. institutions. When Peter, Paul, and Mary sang IF I HAD A HAMMER, their peers knew that the G.I.s had all the hammers and were using them to build ICBMs and interstate highways. Premonitions of guilt began seeping into the Silent mind-set, a dread that horrible social crimes were being committed and hushed up, all for the sake of social discipline.....As young 'outside agitators' started to probe the G.I. edifice for weak points, this rising generation was singing, ever more loudly, 'Deep in my heart, I do believe, We shall overcome some day'. " " Encased in what Ken Kesey depicted as the 'cuckoo's nest' sanitarium of High-era culture, the Silent bent the rules by cultivating refined naughtiness. Hugh Hefner described the consummate playboy as one who 'likes jazz, foreign films, Ivy League clothes, gina and tonic, and pretty girls', with an 'approach to life' that is 'fresh, sophisticated, and yet admittedly sentimental'. By the decade's end, hip thinking moved out of coffeehousees and into the suburbs with a style John Updike called 'half Door store, half Design Research'. As Updike and Philip Roth wrote risque novels about self-doubters, Tom Lehrer and Stan Freburg brought sophistication to satire, and Andy Warhol found art in a G.I. soup can. Apart from James Dean and Presley, the typical young-adult film stars were 'goofballs' like Jerry Lewis or 'sweethearts' like Debbie Reynolds, usually cast alongside confident G.I. 'straight men'. "