Thinking About the Sixties by Richard Goldstein

“The ’60s was was a decade without nostalgia, and thus a decade without irony. It’s only natural, then, that the current wave of nostalgia for the ’60s is suffused with irony — for we are looking back to a time when we most looked toward the future. The writers in this special section on the ’60s disagree about what kind of future that generation foresaw, yet all write on the assumption that rather than reduce our past to artifact we regard it as inspiration. Richard Goldstein, in his odyssey of sensibility [below], asks if it’s possible to reclaim ecstasy. Michael Thelwell, in recalling the traumas of the movement for black empowerment, explores the divergence between hope and naïvete. Jack Newfield’s memoir of Robert Kennedy portrays a man who knew loss yet never lost vision. In Paul Cowan’s ’60s quiz, what was so vivid then seems faded now — but see if you’re part of the problem or part of the solution. Dalton Narine, a black veteran responding to the ‘new wave’ of Vietnam movies, argues that much of the truth is still to be filmed. And in a special VLS section, several writers examine the spate of books about the ’60s — have we come far enough, in Tom Carson’s words, to be anything but ‘temporarily definitive’? Far from a comprehensive survey, then, an embalming of the decade in the casket of history, this section assumes that many chapters of the story remain to be written. The women’s move­ment and gay liberation, for example, are ongoing struggles with their own unique histories; rock and underground films and Off-Broadway and other explosions have their continuing fallout; these subjects and more will be covered in future issues. For now, though, to paraphrase John Lennon, a section with kaleidoscope eyes. — The Editors …”
Village Voice