Legman, G.

The Fake Revolt

New York, NY, USA: Breaking Point, 1967. First Edition. Stapled Wrappers. “It is time to tell the truth. The Gangsters of the New Freedom have moved in on a very broad cultural front, and are already mopping up your kids with narcotic drugs and drivelling pretenses of false revolt. You – you good Americans who are helpless to prevent your children from goofing out on marihuana and LSD, because you don't know how to stop drinking whiskey yourselves – you are waking up too late, if you are waking up at all. You are the biggest chumps and suckers in the history of the world. You have let your children be perverted before your eyes, out of stupidity, snobbery, and the hope of making a dirty dollar on the deal yourselves. I mean YOU. Not him – not them – YOU. Furthermore, it is too late now to do anything about it. Let that be said clearly: it is now too late. Nothing can be done. You are about to crash. Your bright day on the stage of world history is over, though you imagine yourselves at high noon. You have committed the crime that cannot be forgiven, and cannot be repaired: you have destroyed your children. After the children are destroyed, the end is not long to wait. You have been weighed, weighed and found wanting. The Russians and the Chinese will divide you before this century ends. Today they smile pityingly over their tea, as they watch you helplessly dirtying up your final diaper: the only great country in the world that will have lasted hardly two hundred years.” (pg. 3). Gershon Legman (1917-1999), was an American cultural critic, folklorist, and author of The Rationale of the Dirty Joke (1968) and The Horn Book: Studies in Erotic Folklore and Bibliography (1964). Offered today is the 1967 anti-Hippie polemic, The Fake Revolt. A searing indictment of the Hippie movement, and Legman pulls no punches, especially in lines like “In the end, a hippie or a beatnik is a frantically self-advertising coward and parasite, all tired and ‘beaten’ by a struggle in which he somehow never engaged.” Legman lambasts the New Left for being entirely artificial, cowardly, and wholly useless. Legman argues that the parents of the Hippies allowed them to fall into degeneracy, drug use, and a general collapse of all morality; further, Legman sees the New Left and its adherents as simply being a thin veneer for wealthy children to masquerade as radicals while not risking the consequences of radical action. Ultimately, Legman’s scathing rebuke of the “Fake Revolt” is a large-scale accusation of the counter-culture of the 60s as being vapid and worthless. From the collection of Richard Cupidi (b. 1945), our esteemed mate in the UK who managed the legendary Unicorn Bookshop in Brighton, England with Bill Butler (1934-1977), the famed American-expatriate poet, publisher & bookseller). From the late 1960s through the early 1970s, Unicorn proffered & published outstanding productions by William S. Burroughs, J.G. Ballard et al., some of which have become the scarcest, all-but-unobtainable Beat-&-Beyond collectibles (see for example our item No.s 8217, 8366). After prevailing against censorious harassment efforts, Unicorn closed & Butler died in short order. Cupidi went on to found the Public House Bookshop in Brighton, which had a long & successful run but is also now closed, & he still resides there. We have been honored to obtain what Cupidi has termed "The Last Hurrah," all the remaining rarities of Unicorn & Public House such as this. Stapled wrappers. First edition though not explicated as such at copyright page. In relatively fine-to-very fine condition with moderate wear to fine edges, slight smudging/staining to front and back covers, and moderate rusting at staples. Fine-to-Very Fine. [Item #8892]

Price: $60.00