First came the Beats, then the hipsters, then the hippies: all within thirty years of World War II. By the 1980s, American countercultural radicalism had exhausted itself, but during its gloriously hectic run it had performed nobly enough that today it is (rightly) credited with having brought about indelible change in our politics, our social attitudes, our arts. Perhaps, most especially, our arts. It was 1950s realpolitik that did it. What had it meant, after all, to have won the fight against Nazi Germany only to be living within the straitjacket of cold-war anxiety? In the late 1940s, early '50s, young writers like Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Norman Mailer, thought that they and their friends were a sacred company of inspired madmen destined to convert the poisoned atmosphere of America's atom-bomb politics
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