Inspiring Action through Creative Writing

The two pieces we read this week from our anthology, “The Police Band” by Donald Barthelme and “Che’s Last Letter” by Abbie Hoffman, were interesting in their portrayal of the creative techniques different people were using in trying to influence others to direct action. Barthelme himself put it succinctly when he said that “however much the writer might want to be straightforward, these virtues are no longer available to him. He [the writer] discovers that in being simple, honest, [and] straightforward, nothing much happens.” Barthelme and Hoffman each devised very distinct yet equally imaginative ways of circumventing straightforward appeals to the masses and delivering their messages in more subtle forms.

That said, I must admit that I don’t truly understand Barthelme’s point in his short story, “The Police Band.” The story itself is humorous and enjoyable, but I simply don’t get what exactly he is trying to satire. This is most likely due to my own lack of knowledge about the era—I don’t know if the police really did try outrageous stunts and off the wall ideas along the lines of that described in the story (in which case, Barthelme was mocking them), or if he was suggesting that the police should be more liberal and open-minded to new ideas and more peaceful strategies (in which case, Barthelme was condemning them). I can see the irony either way; I just don’t know which one was meant!

Hoffman’s letter, on the other hand, was perfectly clear. By impersonating the already respected revolutionary figure of Che Guevara, Hoffman hoped to inspire in his readers a gripping passion for the cause of freedom. Here, Hoffman assumes (correctly or not) that being direct would not achieve his desired results. From the beginning of his letter, he relies heavily upon the rhetorical use of pathos, trying to relate Che to the U.S. youth he is addressing. This is particularly apparent in lines such as, “We are somewhere in the jungles of Bolivia … struggling against immense odds. My thoughts turn to the young people struggling for a chance at life in the bowels of plastic America cut off from the lifeline of human existence.” Hoffman also relies upon metaphor, as in, “Surely the destiny of man was to lift himself out of the jungle,” where he creates a new metaphor to relate Che’s supposed situation to that of the U.S. counterculture. These strategies seem like they would be quite effective.

Abbie Hoffman himself is an interesting persona of the ’60s. He has a history of “creative” approaches to influencing others, as this letter is not the first instance of Hoffman’s readiness to deceive in order to attain his goals. As we read in our other textbook, Hoffman (as part of the Youth International Party) purposely attempted to incite riots at the Democratic Party Convention in Chicago—only admitting so after being acquitted of the charges, of course. He succeeded in his plans there… I wonder if anyone at the time really believed that his letter was written by Che?

History and Music

I loved reading Kay Boyle’s “Testament for My Students, 1968-1969.” Not only did I find it amazing and wonderful that a teacher would “sympathize with her radical students and [go] to jail for demonstrating with them,” but also I enjoyed her use of the rhetoric of history—using historic literary references and drawing from her own memories of the past—and the rhetoric of music—the power and influence of music to simultaneously shape and reflect an entire generation.

It was interesting that Boyle dropped names such as Melville, Poe, Dickinson, and Stein, but then quoted only her own students. She seems to have been truly inspired by them, and, in reading the brief snippets of their prose and poetry that she included in her “Testament,” it’s not hard to see why. Protesting against the exclusive, establishment-oriented course that universities were taking at the time, one student proclaimed, “Poetry is for the people and it should represent the people,” while another wryly remarked, “Don’t make too much noise / You might wake up the middle class.” These messages seem difficult to understand, in a way, because universities have become so liberal in the last 40 years, but the underlying tone and sentiment still ring true for many aspects of our contemporary society.

Exploring her memories of her own days as a college student, in the middle of a generation of cold-war conformity, Boyle recreates a long-winded professor full of self-importance who speaks the rhetoric of change while obviously not intending to change a thing. His own discombobulated speech seems focused more on the avoidance of issues than on the confrontation of them: “There is no possibility of successfully inaugurating . . . any course unless that inauguration or initiation has been preceded by a long term study in depth of what it may be advisable to undertake at some future time.” Thus, the professor makes it clear that the process of change and growth he half-heartedly proposes will certainly be a long and drawn-out process—which, of course, it was and still is.

Here, Boyle makes her first reference to the power and influence of music: “That’s what rock and roll is for; . . . It’s the only thing loud enough to drown out the voices of the cautious of our day.” I highlighted that line when I first read this section, thinking it was funny. Later, when I read the section by Andrew Gordon (“Smoking Dope with Thomas Pynchon: A Sixties Memoir”), I found myself highlighting three more references to rock and roll as being the music of the times, and I realized it was more than just humorous—it was significant. This music was truly able to express what was happening, not only the facts, but also the mood, the emotions—anticipation, frustration, excitement, anger, energy, hope. One of Gordon’s music references was also a literary reference: “Kerouac was of the cool fifties; he wrote jazz fiction. But Pynchon was of the apocalyptic sixties; he wrote rock and roll.” The analogy is amazingly fitting.

And “apocalyptic” seems a fitting word to describe the decade of change and upheaval that was the Sixties. The mythos and mystique of this era is so strong, even today. Will we ever have a decade as turbulent and full of real change again? It doesn’t seem possible; all factors had colluded perfectly to create the setting for this one, single, incredible moment in time. As Gordon describes it, “If someone told you the history of the decade as a story, you wouldn’t believe it. . . . You wouldn’t know how to feel, to laugh or to cry.” This is true even now, looking back—so much good and so much evil happened all at once in that era: the Vietnam War, the war protests, the FSM, the Hippies, Haight-Ashbury, environmental awareness, Woodstock, the draft, the music, the drugs… 40 years later, it’s still overwhelming.

Altamont: the Beginning of the End…

From the stories I’ve read and heard about the Rolling Stones concert at Altamont Speedway (or, as it was hyped, “Woodstock West”), it seems the concert went terrifyingly wrong in almost every way. As Michael Lydon describes it, it would have felt like it was truly the beginning of the end of the carefree, communal days of Hippie peace and love.

Perhaps doomed to epic failure from the start, Altamont began with cancelled venues, greedy business owners, commercial hype, and disappointed hopes… none of which seems to be in the spirit of the Hippies. Among other last minute events surrounding Altamont, the owners of the Speedway did not volunteer their services until Friday afternoon, after multiple venues fell through and only hours before the concert was scheduled to open on Saturday morning. In the meantime, competing radio stations were turning the entire festival into a commercial bonanza, in complete contradiction to the intent of a free concert.

Not all was lost at first though, as the hawkers of old Stones concert flyers were chased off the premises and drugs were freely given away and passed around. Lydon compares Altamont to Woodstock insofar as the high expectations of community and cooperation, but he describes the failure as partially due to those very expectations: at Woodstock, necessity produced the amazing final outcome; whereas at Altamont, everyone was trying far too hard to produce another Woodstock.

It seems an old lesson, to want something so much that you can’t see what you really have. The concertgoers, organizers, and participants wanted the event to be something it was not so badly that any real outcome would have disappointed and frustrated. Lydon writes about “the wanting … the unfulfilled desire,” the idea that everyone was trying to escape, but they didn’t know what they were escaping or where they were escaping to… This must have been a horribly frustrating and confusing experience.

The one ideal moment that Lydon portrays happening at Altamont was when the Stones first began to play. I love his description of that perfect sense of “being” brought on by the experience of the music, and I think I have a feeling for what he’s talking about. At a large, outdoor music festival, as evening comes on and the band everyone has been waiting for steps out and begins to play, there can be a powerful sense of shared experience. The culmination of all emotions leading up to that one perfect moment in time is released into the emotion of the music, and, combined, these emotions spill over from each person to all those surrounding. The result is almost a collective consciousness, lost in the power of music and the sense of community.

Unfortunately, the dangerous combination of Hells Angels and Hippies once again brought an unhappy end to the festivities. Reading about the Angels’ random attacks in the crowd was harrowing enough; knowing that they beat a man to death only feet away from the stage is simply incomprehensible. It’s disturbing to know that no one was ever punished for this heinous act, but it may be even more outrageous to know that nobody ever saw (or came forward) with information, even though it happened directly in front of 300,000 people. Lydon may explain this best when he remembers that everyone “seemed beyond the law at Altamont, out there willingly…and on our own.” There is truth to that statement, at least.

FSM, Protest . . . & the Hell's Angels?

The focus in the reading selections this week was on the Free Speech Movement’s various forms of protest and resistance, and I found it to be quite fascinating. It seems there may be an unconscious supposition that the Hippies were unorganized, living in the moment and simply letting things happen as they may, but the disproof of that idea is clear in the flyers, pamphlets, posters, and memoirs that emerged from around Berkeley during this era.

David Lance Goines is (again) my favorite author from this section, as he tells the story of participating in the Sproul Hall protest and subsequently being arrested. His sense of humor is evident in abundance, even as he is questioned by the arresting officer: “’Name?’ ‘David Goines.’ ‘Race?’ ‘Human.’” You simply have to admire gumption like his! Before his arrest, though, we get the first hints of the organization and thoughtful planning behind the protest, all the way down to how to react as you’re being arrested. Goines describes the instructions shouted out among the protesters as the police arrive: “Don’t link arms; go limp and make them carry you. Do NOT resist in any way. . . . Take off your buttons, the sharp pins could stick you. . . . If you see any instances of brutality, get the officer’s badge number.” These students knew the situation they were in, knew how the police would respond, and knew their rights, and they planned accordingly. This strikes me as a much more sophisticated form of protest and resistance than we may generally associate with the Hippie movements.

Reading further, I began to understand how these instructions were spread in the first place. Flyers such as “The Rules of the Game . . . When You’re Busted,” which were distributed “on the streets of Berkeley during the FSM demonstrations,” are amazingly explicit in what you can and cannot do when being stopped, searched, or arrested – even going so far as to quote the specific statutes that apply to each situation. Apparently, being a free spirit doesn’t stop one from doing a little homework! The other flyer, “Wanted: Hip Cops,” is equally fantastic. The idea of “recruiting” among the Hippies themselves to apply for positions in the police force is interesting – and perfect for this country. As Gandhi said, “You must be the change you want to see in the world.”

The next document to provide instructions for resistance comes from Allen Ginsberg himself, in his essay in the Berkeley Barb on how to plan and execute a successful, peaceful demonstration. The famous Beat had plenty of ideas and some fascinating theories, proving that he truly thought the situation through. He suggests everything from bringing “masses of flowers – a visual spectacle” to bringing crosses “held up in front of violence . . . like in the movies dealing with Dracula.” He also puts forth ideas on what to do “in case of heavy anxiety, confusion, or struggle,” including “sit down,” or “intone . . . the Lord’s Prayer [or] Om.” He even suggests carrying “copies of the Constitution,” “little paper halos to offer [Hell’s] Angels [and] police,” and, of course, “movie cameras,” which he notes, “could be used in court in case of legal hassles later.” Finally, he proposes that flyers with these instructions be handed out before marches and protests – which, it appears, they were. Clearly, the Free Speech demonstrations held around Berkeley were well planned, meticulously prepared for, and anything but a random gathering of half-aware Hippies.

Ginsberg mentioned the Hell’s Angels in his essay, and they have also been described in various other readings throughout this course, including the next selection by Hunter Thompson. Thompson explains how the Angels were so intimately connected to the Hippies, and how dangerously delicate that connection truly was. Before taking this course, I had never realized what a huge influence the Hell’s Angels had during this era; when I thought of California Hippies, I didn’t associate the Angels into that mix. However, they seem to have had a great impact on many of the major events occurring in the Bay Area at the time. This seemed strange to me at first, since the Angels often brought violence and right-wing patriotism with them, but the connection is somewhat clarified in reading Thompson’s narrative. If the Angels and the Hippies had anything in common, it was their shared disdain for authority: as Thompson put it, “the Angels had a reputation for defying police, for successfully bucking authority, and to the frustrated student radical this was a powerful image indeed. . . . The Angels’ aggressive, antisocial stance – their alienation, as it were – had a tremendous appeal.”

Of course, it seems inevitable that the very aggression that appealed to the Hippies would eventually divide the two groups. The real crossroads, it turns out, was their respective stances on the Vietnam War. Thompson describes a brutal clash at an anti-Vietnam demonstration where the Angels turned against the Hippies, calling them “Traitors” and “Communists.” “When push came to shove,” Thompson writes, “the Hell’s Angels lined up solidly with the cops.” I suppose this lesson had to arrive at some point: not all who protest against the status quo are looking for the same utopia on the other side of the revolution.