The Portable Sixties Reader

From civil rights to free love, JFK to LSD, Woodstock to the Moonwalk, the Sixties was a time of change, political unrest, and radical experiments in the arts, sexuality, and personal identity. In this anthology of more than one hundred selections of essays, poetry, and fiction by some of America’s most gifted writers, Ann Charters sketches the unfolding of this most turbulent decade. The Portable Sixties Reader is organized into thematic chapters, from the Civil Rights movement to the Anti-Vietnam movement, the Free Speech movement, the Counterculture movement, drugs and the movement into Inner Space, the Beats and other fringe literary movements, the Black Arts movement, the Women’s movement, and the Environmental movement. The concluding chapter, “Elegies for the Sixties,” offers tributes to ten figures whose lives—and deaths—captured the spirit of the decade. Contributors include: Edward Abbey, Sherman Alexie, James Baldwin, Richard Brautigan, Lenny Bruce, Charles Bukowski, William Burroughs, Jim Carroll, Rachel Carson, Carlos Castenada, Bob Dylan, Betty Friedan, Nikki Giovanni, Michael Herr, Abbie Hoffman, Robert Hunter, Ken Kesey, Martin Luther King, Jr., Timothy Leary, Denise Levertov, Norman Mailer, Malcolm X, Country Joe McDonald, Kate Millet, Tim O’Brien, Sylvia Plath, Susan Sontag, Gloria Steinem, Hunter S. Thompson, Calvin Trillin, Alice Walker, Eudora Welty and more. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Table of Contents:
The Portable Sixties Reader - Edited with an Introduction by Ann Charters Preface The Sixties: A Chronology Part One: Struggling to Be Free: The Civil Rights Movement JAMES BALDWIN - "The Dangerous Road Before Martin Luther King" MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. - "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" ROSA PARKS - from Rosa Parks: My Story ANNE MOODY - from Coming of Age in Mississippi EUDORA WELTY - "Where Is the Voice Coming From?" CALVIN TRILLIN - "The March" BOB DYLAN - "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll" DUDLEY RANDALL - "Ballad of Birmingham" ROBERT LOWELL - "For the Union Dead" MALCOLM X - "The Ballot or the Bullet" ALICE WALKER - "The Civil Rights Movement: What Good Was It?" CHARLES JOHNSON - from Dreamer Part Two: End It! And End It Now!: The Anti-Vietnam Movement THOMAS MERTON - "Original Child Bomb" SUSAN SONTAG - "What's Happening in America (1966)" DENISE LEVERTOV - "Life at War" "Overheard over S. E. Asia" ROBERT BLY - "The Teeth Mother Naked at Last" DAVID LANCE GOINES - "Let Sleeping Dogs Lie" ANN CHARTERS - "How to Maintain a Peaceful Demonstration" NORMAN MAILER - from The Armies of the Night: "A Confrontation by the River" ROBERT CHATAIN - from "On the Perimeter" MICHAEL HERR - from Dispatches TIM O'BRIEN - "The Man I Killed" RON KOVIC - from Born on the Fourth of July JANICE MIRIKITANI - "Attack the Water" YUSEF KOMUNYAKAA - "Tunnels" "Hanoi Hannah" "'You and I Are Disappearing'" "2527th Birthday of the Buddha" "Prisoners" "Nude Interrogation" "Facing It" Part Three: Why Can We Not Begin Anew? The Free Speech Movement and Beyond DAVE MANDEL - "Battle of Berkeley Talking Blues" LEE FELSENSTEIN - "Put My Name Down" RICHARD KAMPF - "Hey Mr. Newsman" DAN PAIK - "There's a Man Taking Names" RICHARD SCHMORLEITZ AND DAN PAIK - "I Walked Out in Berkeley" DAVID LANCE GOINES - from The Free Speech Movement "The Rules of the Game... When You're Busted" "Wanted: Hip Cops" ALLEN GINSBERG - "Demonstration or Spectacle as Example, as Communication - or How to Make a March/Spectacle" HUNTER THOMPSON - from Hell's Angels: "The Dope Cabala and a Wall of Fire" KAY BOYLE - "Testament for My Students, 1968-1969" ANDREW GORDON - "Smoking Dope with Thomas Pynchon: A Sixties Memoir" DONALD BARTHELME - "The Police Band" ABBIE HOFFMAN - "Che's Last Letter" WILLAM S. BURROUGHS - "The Coming of the Purple Better One" EDWARD SANDERS - "Yeats in the Gas" Part Four: "I Feel Like I'm Fixin' to Die": The Counterculture Movement COUNTRY JOE MCDONALD - "I Feel Like I'm Fixin'-to-Die Rag" "Talking Non-Violence" "Superbird" "Janis" DOUGLAS BLAZEK - "THE little PHENOMENA" EMMETT GROGAN - from Ringolevio R. G. DAVIS - "A Minstrel Show or: Civil Rights in a Cracker Barrel" SALLY TOMLINSON - "Psychedelic Rock Posters: History, Ideas, and Art" MICHAEL LYDON - "The Rolling Stones - At Play in the Apocalypse" ROBERT HUNTER - "New Speedway Boogie" SHERMAN ALEXIE - "Because My Father Always Said He Was the Only Indian Who Saw Jimi Hendrix Play 'The Star-Spangled Banner' at Woodstock" Part Five: Adrift in the Age of Aquarius: Drugs and the Movement into Inner Space TIMOTHY LEARY - "Turning On the World" DIANE DI PRIMA - "The Holidays at Millbrook - 1966" CARLOS CASTANEDA - from The Teachings of Don Juan N. SCOTT MOMADAY - from House Made of Dawn KEN KESEY - "Letters from Mexico" LENNY BRUCE - "Pills and Shit: The Drug Scene" JIM CARROLL - from The Basketball Diaries Part Six: Living in the Revolution: The Beats and Some Other Literary Movements at the Edge CHARLES OLSON - "The Hustings" LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI - Letters to Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, and Peter Orlovsky, 1961-1962 ALLEN GINSBERG - "Kral Majales" DIANE DI PRIMA - "Revolutionary Letters #1, 3, 5, 8" GARY SNYDER - "Poke Hole Fishing After the March" MICHAEL MCCLURE - from Ghost Tantras BOB KAUFMAN - "Grandfather Was Queer, Too" JOHN CLELLON HOLMES - "Visitor: Jack Kerouac in Old Saybrook" RICHARD BRAUTIGAN - "The Cleveland Wrecking Yard" CHARLES BUKOWSKI - from Notes of a Dirty Old Man Part Seven: Out of the Fire: The Black Arts Movement and the Reshaping of Black Consciousness LARRY NEAL - "The Black Arts Movement" DON L. LEE - from Think Black 1965-1967 HAKI R. MADHUBUTI - "Malcolm Spoke/who listened?" ETHERIDGE KNIGHT - "The Idea of Ancestry" AL YOUNG - "Conjugal Visits" "A Dance for Ma Rainey" NIKKI GIOVANNI - "My Poem" CAROLYN M. RODGERS - "It Is Deep" AMIRI BARAKA - "Numbers, Letters" ISHMAEL REED - "Eldridge Cleaver - Writer" ALLEN POLITE - "Song" "Why They Are in Europe?" ["We Knew Our Loneliness and Told It"] Part Eight: With Our Arms Upraised: The Women's Movement and the Sexual Revolution BETTY FRIEDAN - from The Feminine Mystique KATE MILLETT - from Sexual Politics MURIEL RUKEYSER - "Poem" SYLVIA PLATH - "Lady Lazarus" ANNE SEXTON - "The Abortion" "The Addict" "The Ballad of the Lonely Masturbator" DENISE LEVERTOV - "About Marriage" "The Mutes" DIANE WAKOSKI - "Belly Dancer" "Ringles" HETTIE JONES- from How I Became Hettie Jones VALERIE SOLANAS - from SCUM Manifesto GLORIA STEINEM - "A New Egalitarian Life Style" Part Nine: In Defense of the Earth: The Environmental Movement RACHEL CARSON - from Silent Spring PETER MATTHIESSEN - from Wildlife in America DIANE DI PRIMA - "Revolutionary Letter #16" GARY SNYDER - "What You Should Know to Be a Poet" "Revolution in the Revolution in the Revolution" "Smokey the Bear Sutra" LEW WELCH - "Preface to Hermit Poems, The Bath" ["I Know a Man's Supposed to Have His Hair Cut Short"] ["Apparently Wasps"] ["I Burn Up the Deer in My Body"] ["Step Out onto the Planet"] "The Song Mt. Tamalpais Sings" WENDELL BERRY - "To the Unseeable Animal" EDWARD ABBEY - "The Serpents of Paradise" N. SCOTT MOMADAY - from The Way to Rainy Mountain Part Ten: Ten Elegies for the Sixties for Ernest Hemingway: ARCHIBALD MACLEISH - "Hemingway" for Marilyn Monroe: MICHAEL MCCLURE - from Ghost Tantras, #39 for John F. Kennedy: ERIC VON SCHMIDT - "Kennedy Blues" for Sylvia Plath: JOHN BERRYMAN - from The Dream Songs, #172 for Malcolm X: ETHERIDGE KNIGHT - "The Sun Came" for Martin Luther King, Jr.: DON L. LEE - "Assassination" for Robert F. Kennedy: LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI - "Assassination Raga" for Neal Cassady: ALLEN GINSBERG - "On Neal's Ashes" for Janis Joplin: MARILYN HACKER - "Elegy" for Jack Kerouac: The Harvard Crimson - "Kerouac, 1922-1969" Selected Bibliography Acknowledgments Alphabetical List of Authors and Titles

About the Author :
Ann Charters, a Jack Kerouac and Beat Generation scholar, is professor of American Literature emerita at the University of Connecticut in Storrs. in 1966, she worked with Kerouac to compile his bibliography, and was the only biographer who interviewed him about the circumstances in which he wrote his books. She is the author of his first biography, Kerouac, in 1973. She edited his posthumous poetry collection, Scattered Poems. She is also the editor of numerous books on Beat and other literature, including The Portable Beat Reader, The Portable Sixties Reader, Beat Down to Your Soul, The Portable Jack Kerouac Reader, and two volumes of Kerouac’s Selected Letters.