On the houseboat vacay, I ran out of books, so Tina loaned me Drop City. Basically, it's about the clash of two subcultures - a commune of hippies and backwoods Alaskan men who live off the land. Even though the two groups come from completely different mindsets, they both have the goal of escaping capitalistic society.

Not having been alive in the 60's, it's really easy to just view the whole hippie culture as some kind of cute episode in history. Peace signs! Tie dye! Acid! I guess it just seems like some little blip that maybe only affected a few people, so it's weird to think of it like more of a movement. Reading this book has been interesting in refuting that perception. Obviously, I can't know what it was like, so I'm just taking the narrator's word for it, but the characters in the book are totally flaky drug heads, but they also are sincerely earnest about the idea of living a different kind of life and changing the status quo.

I know that I've never felt that kind of optimism - that you could choose to live off the map or chage the world or whatever. It just seems like maybe back then there was way more opportunity to do that kind of thing. Like not even the whole trying to change the world part, just trying to survive without a job in today's society seems impossible to me. Bartering for things you need? Can one even barter in today's society? Maybe for little stuff, but not enough to sustain a life.

Of course, reading this book, it sounds like the lifestyle is majorly uncomfortable. God, no showers, dirty sleeping bags, ramshackle communes. Why would anyone want to live that way? Is all the discomfort and bad food and instability worth not having to go to work everyday? I guess it depends on your personality. I know that I like to be comfortable. I couldn't do it. I would have been a horrible hippie. I woulda been like where are the showers? Long haired dudes playing the same 3 songs on janky out of tune guitars around a campfire? Let me bite off my leg to get OUT OF THERE. Woodstock? Why on earth would I want to run around naked in MUD? I bet you could get ring worm like that. I guess they didn't care about ring worm. I'm a product of my own generation and  era and somehow society and culture and my upbringing have all contrived to make it very important to me to not get ring worm. But we also know that I don't like concerts anyway, so I don't think there's any band in the history of the world that would make me want to deal with Woodstock conditions. So it could just be me and the rest of my generation is DOWN for some naked-mud-no-bathrooms type concerts.

When I think about creating a commune, I think it would be cool. IF it involved me and my friends on a major huge plot of land - but each with our own nice house and tvs and internet. And no farming. We could, like, get a big plot of beachside land in Nicaragua and telecommute to work for 20 hours a week and eat gourmet and have indoor plumbing. Hmmm...sounds more like a resort than a commune. I'm SOFT.

I guess I'm not really saying anything new here, but I've found this book interesting on many levels. It's been cool to have an unromantic look at an era that is often romanticized. In a way, the lack of rose colored glasses makes it more interesting to consider. In any case, all this to say that I'm enjoying this book and that I'd recommend it.