"Poet, publisher and bookseller Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who helped launch and perpetuate the Beat movement, has died. He was 101. Mr. Ferlinghetti died at his San Francisco home Monday, his son Lorenzo Ferlinghetti told the Associated Press on Tuesday. The cause was lung disease." - The Wall Street Journal (originally published by AP), February 23, 2021.
Even many Baby Boomers don't remember the Beats.
But had not Ferlinghetti been a culture-changer, America wouldn't have been fully able to shake off the white-bread Eisenhower era.
That upheaval was the counterculture.
Deans in Ivy League universities shook in their boots.
And later, the Wokes have made significant strides in cancelling Western Civilization. William Shakespeare might wind up not even a footnote in history. Hamlet who?
In the counterculture, as among the Wokes, higher education was questioned. Many ducked out of graduate school before finishing their dissertations. There was more important work to do. The only regret was not having gone to law school. Otherwise the best and brightest, as least labeled as such before they dropped out, could do more for consumer rights than just be a grassroots Nader Raider.
Then came the brutal economic downturn of the mid 1970s. That was that. The Eisenhower era circled back. Corporate America was organized on the military model.
And now here America is, fumbling for what to do about this Ferlinghetti guy. Should we come to praise him or bury him? After all, his medium was the book. Print. Current culture-shapers like Barack Obama and Bruce Springsteen are podcasting.
It's hard to resurrect the ethos of the Beat Age. Come to think of it, it's difficult to time travel to the counterculture. Were they really so free? Internally did they question their lack of proper attention to careers? After all, they missed out on years of earning and socking away funds in a retirement fund.
And, will the Woke wake up to the brute necessity of being totally careerist in order to keep up with inflation? Most influence is unsustainable. Some could wind up marginal, just like members of the counterculture who couldn't or wouldn't grow up.
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