The Wise Old Owl was questioning me about the original
Yippie meeting.
Schneider wins over his audience with his punchy, time-appropriate dialogue, with emphasis on the stoners and countercultural types who say the dumbest things in order to sound "cool." There is some baby boomer fetishization here, and the Chicago cops are often depicted as slobbering beasts while Hoffman and the
Yippies come off as harmless pranksters, but such romanticism does not derail the novel's main thrust.
Building on the argument Weisenburger made two decades ago in Fables of Subversion (1995)--which linked outlandish postmodern fiction like Pynchon's to the carnivalesque impulse of Menippean satire--the chapter characterizes Gravity's Rainbow as part of the tradition of the "stunningly corrosive satirical work of the Long Sixties" (71), framing the novel's 1966-1971 composition in terms of the era's underground presses, the subversive public performances of radical groups like the
Yippies, and the free speech movement.
But as "
Yippie," the Riverfront Residence Hall resident adviser's boisterous side surfaces.
Jerry Rubin, Hoffman's fellow
yippie, also advocated rebellion through thievery.
Bowser presents quite the gallery of talking heads, including a few who appear from beyond the grave--among them journo Jack Newfield and
Yippie pranksters Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, who address Ochs' fierce political commitment, his insistence on singing in Chicago during the Democratic National Convention of 1968 and, later, his disillusionment with what happened--or rather, didn't happen--as a consequence of Chicago.
A close confidant of
Yippie founder and leader Jerry Rubin, he mirrored Rubin's quirky passage from the somber Maoism of the Progressive Labor (PL) Party to the "do your own thing," culturally-oriented yet politically-involved
Yippies protest.
However, there are a few concessions to parents like the nod to Die Hard when one heroic guinea pig takes on an animated and heavily-armed espresso machine, screaming, "
Yippie kay-yay coffeemaker!" Sadly, only the 2D version of the film is available on DVD and Blu-ray.
But combine those with his role as a co-founder of the
Yippie movement, his membership in Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters, and his X-rated standup comedy routine and those initial credentials sound downright dangerous.
Tampoco podra dejar de recordar a Abbie Hoffman, quien en compania de Jerry Rubin, creo el movimiento
Yippie (Youth International Party), el 31 de diciembre de 1967.
Mailer disagreed with the
Yippie movement's tactics in Chicago but protested the Chicago Seven's indictment and trial on federal charges of conspiracy and inciting to riot.
Abbie Hoffman's
Yippie activism, for example, turns out to have always already had formalism's tools in its kit.