CSS of The Precedence of Women, itinerantnlecturess, talkshow personality, andncryptolesbian.” Jude and her hard-corenfriends lure Samantha away from Victornwith a promise of an upwardly mobilenposition as assistant editor of a newnwomen’smagazine. Bill and Victor comenhome one evening to find notes fromntheir wives announcing that they havengone to do what is really important tonthem. Viaor plots revenge. The rest ofnthe book consists of Nietzsche-like haranguesnin praise of vengeance and Victor’snplans to inflict it on Jude and hernassociates. Some of this is funny, the wayna stand-up comic in a cheap nightclub isnfunny. Stade’s wit is incisive as he impalesnand shreds the intellectual pretentiousnessnof feminism, even involang thenCount of Monte Cristo, Hamlet, andnother tragic male heroes. But it is alsonPunks, Potheads, & PhoniesnMarshall W. Fishwick: CommonnCulture and the Great Tradition: ThenCase for Renewal; Greenwood Press;nWestport, CT.nTimothy leary: Changing My Mind,nAmong Others; Prentice-Hall; EnglewoodnCliffs, NJ.nMalcolm E. Smith: The Real MarijuananDanger; Suffolk House; Smithtown,nNY.nby Clay Clemensn1 hree books which have come alongnoffer a reminder that debris from then1960’s still litters our landscape; damagenwas, after all, the decade’s only enduringnproduct. If you seek a monument to thatnprolonged spasm of protest and “reform”nwhich John Roche calls our verynown Phony Cultural Revolution, looknMr. Clemens is a doctoral candidate atnthe Â¥letcher School of Law and Diplomacy,nTufts University.n32inChronicles of Culturenwearisome and wordy, as fiction narratednin the first person often is.nJi this ill-matched trilogy,nAtwood’s book is perhaps the most interesting,nbecause it is at least about anwoman, not a movement or a “lifestyle.”nPiercy is spewing stock hypocrisy, ponderousnand humorless, ten years afternthat sort of thing began to fade in America.nUnfortunately, Stade’s Confessionsnisn’t an adequate counterweight tonPiercy. She makes speeches; he tellsnjokes. But the jokes only nip at the edgesnof the style of feminism, while ignoringnor sidestepping its power as a pseudointellectualnfacade for bad writing,nmean-spirited politics, and oldfashionednprurience. The work of fictionnthat will confront feminism for what it is,nit seems, has not yet been written. Dnabout you. Public education sags undernthe dead weight of “democratization”nand academic bureaucracy, with a searchnfor some way back to the basics only nowngetting under way. Our mass medianbroadcast across only those frequenciesnset for familiar liberal buzzwords, forcingngenuine debate on intellectual mattersnand public policy onto less-accessiblenchannels of communication.nThe 1960’s left few American institutionsnuntouched; for those it touched, itnwas usually the touch of death. The urgento abolish often preceded the capacity tontransform, and the amount of creativenchange was remarkably limited. Antongue-in-cheek film made several yearsnago depicted hapless bureaucrats tryingnin vain to illustrate the benefits of urbannrenewal: they could produce pictures ofnold tenements being torn down, butnnone of new apartments going up. Likenurban redevelopment—spawn of then60’s—the decade rarely delivered on itsnpromise of renewal. What the demolitionncrews often failed to recognize wasnthe value of foundations. Feminists,nnncounterculture elites, campus radicals,nand their allies in the Establishment zealouslynlaid waste to traditional structuresnwhile believing they could be replaced bynprefab ideals. Old communities werendestroyed in the name of racial harmony,nand established religion suffered at thenhands of pious sociologists. Yet apologistsnfor the 60’s still cling to the convictionnthat somewhere in that ragout ofnhubris, ignorance, and violence was thentaste of real progress. At a recent conference,nseveral experts discussed thenemergence of a 60’s-style “alternative”nestablishment in West Germany—ancountry where some cultural clocks havenbeen set back 15 years. Squatters andnradicals are administrators in cities likenBerlin, while other elements of thencounterculture increasingly influencennational politics. None of this dismayednone American participant at the conference,nwho judged that the so-callednalternatives clearly provide a system ofnvalues which appeal to the disenchantednyouth of West German society. Thenwoman was, fittingly, a member of SenatornTed Kennedy’s staff; her dreams willnnever die.nApparently Marshall Fishwick is contentnwith much that the 1960’s wrought.nThe decade opened his eyes to all that isnwrong with our concept of culture. Hendiscovered in that tempestuous time thatnculture need not be inspired by loftynaspirations and ideals, nor must it derivenfrom abstract notions like beauty andnsymmetry. The decade revealed to himnthat a “common culture” well below thenexalted heights of elitist art, literature,nand philosophy is available to us all,nthough we may not know it. Certainntimeless elements in our everyday lifenform the basis of culture, things whichnappear spontaneously generation afterngeneration, linking us with both ournancestors and our descendants. They aren”fundamental”: folklore, myths, andnhero worship, for example. In short, thisnimagery is the stuff of which culture isntruly composed, and Mr. Fishwick s&cs itnas the thread of continuity in our history.nThe passage of time alters only then