Book description
Many books have been written on the Sixties: tributes to music and
fashion, sex, drugs and revolution. In The Sixties, Jenny Diski breaks
the mould, wryly dismantling the big ideas that dominated the era -
liberation, permissiveness and self-invention - to consider what she and
her generation were really up to. Was it rude to refuse to have sex with
someone? Did they take drugs to get by, or to see the world differently?
How responsible were they for the self-interest and greed of the
Eighties? With characteristic wit and verve, Diski takes an incisive
look at the radical beliefs to which her generation subscribed, little
realising they were often old ideas dressed up in new forms, sometimes
patterned by BIBA. She considers whether she and her peers were as
serious as they thought about changing the world, if the radical sixties
were funded by the baby-boomers' parents, and if the big idea shaping
the Sixties was that it really felt as if it meant something to be
young. Many books have been written on the Sixties: tributes to music
and fashion, sex, drugs and revolution. In The Sixties, Jenny Diski
breaks the mould, wryly dismantling the big ideas that dominated the era
- liberation, permissiveness and self-invention - to consider what she
and her generation were really up to. Was it rude to refuse to have sex
with someone? Did they take drugs to get by, or to see the world
differently? How responsible were they for the self-interest and greed
of the Eighties? With characteristic wit and verve, Diski takes an
incisive look at the radical beliefs to which her generation subscribed,
little realising they were often old ideas dressed up in new forms,
sometimes patterned by BIBA. She considers whether she and her peers
were as serious as they thought about changing the world, if the radical
sixties were funded by the baby-boomers' parents, and if the big idea
shaping the Sixties was that it really felt as if it meant something to
be young.
