Joan Didion’s portrait of the “hippie movement” is not just that, but it is a portrait of a changing America.  Within a story of “trips” and runaways, Slouching Towards Bethlehem is an example of the generational differences in the late 1960s.

Speaking to young runaways at a Grateful Dead concert, she hears of the different ideologies they have than their parents.  Chores seem to them a daunting and unnecessary task.  Consequences for below average grades were “a bummer.”  The teens tell of how they aren’t going to plan for the future, “we’re just gonna let it all happen.”  You can tell that Didion feels some sort of sympathy towards their naivety. When she writes “I finally ask it. I ask them to think back to when they were children, to tell me what they had wanted to be when they were grown up, how they had seen the future then.”  It’s as though their innocence is lost, and with it, all sense of direction.  Didion’s readers would have felt a heart-wrenching feeling of how they could be their children someday, look at what the hippies have done to them. Continue reading →

“If you don’t mind me asking, you don’t really have no ending?”  Adnan asks Koenig this, just days before the final podcast.  She goes on to assure the listeners that she does…but is it the ending we want?  What do we end up getting out of this story?  Throughout the series, Koenig places herself in the position of the audience, asking all of the questions and displaying all of the frustration we share.  To what end?  Twelve episodes and three months in, I’m left with even more questions and no one to ask them for me. Continue reading →