The Long March: How the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s Changed America (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "In November 1995, an exhibition called "Beat Culture and the New America: 1950-1965" opened at The Whitney Museum of American Art..." (more)
Key Phrases: liberating tolerance, liberal capitulation, totalitarian tissues, Norman Mailer, Susan Sontag, United States (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The 1960s, writes Roger Kimball, "has become less the name of a decade than a provocation." This incisive critique of that turbulent time won't calm the debate. The Long March will enthrall conservatives who think of themselves as culture warriors and infuriate liberals who still celebrate "the purple decade." Kimball, managing editor of the New Criterion and author of Tenured Radicals, is one of the Right's most articulate writers. He argues forcefully that the pernicious influence of the 1960s can still be felt: "The success of America's recent cultural revolution can be measured not in toppled governments but in shattered values. If we often forget what great changes this revolution brought in its wake, that, too, is a sign of its success: having changed ourselves, we no longer perceive the extent of our transformation."

The Long March proceeds as a series of stimulating essays on important cultural figures and movements, beginning with the Beats. Norman Mailer comes in for an eloquent trashing ("From the late 1940s until the 1980s, he showed himself to be extraordinarily deft at persuading credulous intellectuals to collaborate in his megalomania"), as do any number of counterculture icons. I.F. Stone's articles, writes Kimball, "read like neo-Stalinist equivalents of those multipart articles on staple crops with which The New Yorker used to anesthetize its readers." And of The New York Review of Books, that bastion of elite liberal opinion, Kimball says: "Quite apart from the irresponsibility of the politics, there was an intellectual irresponsibility at work here, a preening, ineradicable frivolousness toward the cultural values that the journal was supposedly created to nurture." There's a distinctly conservative crankiness to Kimball's writing; the jazz of Miles Davis is inevitably "drug-inspired" and rock music "was not only an aesthetic disaster of gigantic proportions: it was also a moral disaster whose effects are nearly impossible to calculate precisely because they are so pervasive." Yet this inclination can lead to fascinating, if arguable, insights about modern American culture: "Everywhere one looks one sees the elevation of youth--that is to say, of immaturity--over experience. It may seem like a small thing that nearly everyone of whatever age dresses in blue jeans now; but the universalization of that sartorial badge of the counterculture speaks volumes."

Kimball's writing is at once highbrow and accessible. Fans of Robert Bork's Slouching Towards Gomorrah and Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind--or readers who have never quite believed all the English professors proclaiming Allen Ginsberg a poetic genius--will find The Long March engrossing and indispensable. --John J. Miller

From Booklist

Despite naming his book after Mao's protracted war against Chiang Kai-shek, Kimball spends less time demonstrating that '60s radicalism won its long march and became turn-of-the-millennium orthodoxy than he does denouncing the usual suspects. His targets--the Beats, Norman Mailer, Susan Sontag, liberal university presidents, the Berrigan brothers, Norman O. Brown, Timothy Leary, Eldridge Cleaver, the New York Review of Books, etc.--are relatively easy, for they were often contradictory and illogical. Recalling just how outrageous they were is a sobering corrective to '60s nostalgia. But Kimball also scores his betes noires for sexual misbehavior, which for him means anything except conjugal rights. This obsession leads him to rope the bisexual Paul Goodman into his rogues' gallery, even though Goodman disagreed with nearly all the others. Goodman did, however, place sex at the center of his social and psychological thought. That Kimball can't abide, at some cost to the cogency of his rebuttal of David Allyn's Make Love, Not War , and other wistful backward glances. Ray Olson

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 326 pages
• Publisher: Encounter Books; First edition (March 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1893554090
• ISBN-13: 978-1893554092
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.8 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (39 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #641,840 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

74 of 82 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Now I Know, June 7, 2000

By	Joseph Hartmann (naperville, il USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Now I know why our schools, colleges, and moral society are in decay. Roger Kimball's The Long March is a tour de force of the factors responsible for this decline. He pieces together the disparate personalities who were deified at the time as purveyors of a new kind of freedom--freedom without responsibility. What they wrought was a society without standards. "Anything Goes" is their motto but woe to the person who questions the results of this kind of lifestyle. Kimball documents their demand for tolerance of all kinds of malordorous behavior yet they are completely intolerant of any criticism. The results are evident throughout our culture. No other book has shown the sources of this decline with such wit and intelligence. The Long March is essential reading for anyone who cares about preserving American culture.

40 of 44 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellently written (though biased) chronicle of the 60's, January 2, 2001

By	J. Lizzi (Costa Mesa, CA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I'm old enough to remember a little of what went on politically and culturally in the 1960's, but too young to be conversant when it comes to the noted writers, activists and others who set the tone for the "revolution" that took place toward the end of the postwar baby boom. To me, "The Long March" served as a great documentary introduction to this time period that changed the social agenda for many.

Roger Kimball is a conservative who can't stand the influence of the 1960's (actually, the late 50's through the early 70's) in creating what he calls the "liberal establishment" that evolved from that era. His book is a superbly written (and yes, conservatively biased) account of the progression of thought and activism through a little more than a decade, spurred on by a group of influential artists and "avant-garde" intellectuals of the time. The author focuses primarily on the literary aspects of 60's radicalism, with a wealth of commentary on works by authors/poets such as Norman Mailer, Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, Susan Sontag, Timothy Leary and Eldridge Cleaver. In addition, Mr. Kimball chronicles the activism involving the Black Panthers and the student revolts at Berkeley, Cornell and Yale Universities.

Most of Mr. Kimball's efforts are aimed at trashing quotes (literary or otherwise) by every guru that happened to hold sway over the 60's youth and associated political/social "counterculture." I must say, he does a good job of it. He possesses a wonderful way of taking what at the time were much revered literature and speechmaking, and turning them into the most inane, irresponsible drivel one has ever read or heard. The author is particularly unfriendly to pacifists, riot inciters, and advocates of unrestrained sex, drug use, and rock music. Okay, rock 'n' roll ruled, but my views aren't far off from his on the other issues.

What impressed me the most about this book was the author's erudite, witty narrative and his command of the English language. Even though I have no time to get stressed out over what happened 30-40 years ago, I thought this was a great read. That Mr. Kimball's views are right up the conservative alley might leave you either very pleased or horribly distressed. If you happen to think highly of people such as Mailer, Sontag, Leary, Cleaver, or even Tom Hayden, you won't be happy with this book. For others, note the perspective, keep an open mind, and enjoy reading.

35 of 41 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Farce Repeating Itself as Tragedy, July 17, 2000

By	John N. Frary (Farmington, Maine, United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Roger Kimball has squelched through the reeking, gummy, sunless swamps of Sixties Thought so that those of us with less patience and fortitude might be spared the effort. I remember encountering most of these superannuated juvenile delinquent windbags, ranting, panting, prose- killing German professors and other long-marchers in my youth. Although it seemed both impossible and pointless to read any of them through to the end, I have read enough to assert with confidence that Kimball presents his readers with an accurate account of their works. In doing this he has performed a valuable service, and performed it with clarity, precision, and wit.

Never mind that the scribblings of these critters have long since lost their vogue. This book makes clear the source of the ideas which have filled the vacuum caused by the utter collapse of 1950s liberalism and it also sheds light on the confusion and fatuity of the American Intellectual Establishment. This Establishment now finds it convenient to shrug off Kimball's subjects as mere period figures while avoiding any explanation of their previous celebrity. How, for example, to explain the New Yorker's series on Charles Reich's The Greening of America?-a work with less durability, rationality, or merit than bell-bottom jeans. Yet, they were all celebrated for a space and the curious can confirm this with very little research.

Kimball's conviction that American society is like a rudderless ship largely as a consequence of the cultural nihilism championed by the long-marchers forms the context of his work. Those of us enjoying the country's present prosperity and international predominance (and I admit to being a beneficiary) should give some thought to the simile. A rudderless ship may be surging with power, free of leaks, and loaded with fully functioning mechanical amenities, but it faces a problematic future.

In the meantime the ship's band is a pain in the ear.