60's anthologies

TED MORGAN (DENTON@SMTPGATE.sunydutchess.edu)
Mon Nov 3 09:00:49 1997

I much appreciate the replies and recommendations posted here in
response to my query about anthologies for 60's literature
(fiction, poetry...and drama, which I didn't include). And I'm
interested in the discussion about why such anthologies have a
hard time in the market. The replies posted here and those sent
to me directly note that there are (1) past issues of local-press
literary collections published at the time [contact Paula
Friedman], (2) works combining political documents with some
radicals' literary work, and . . . not much else that
anthologizes literature. My original post asked for anthologies
that combine "mainstream/academic with popular/counterculture"
lit. It seems that smaller press materials for the latter are
available, but not the combination. As Sandra Hollin Flowers and
Michael Bibby wonder about the difficult market for 60's books,
perhaps we might think about the usefulness (and saleability) of
a book that DOES bring together the two currents. My course is
a "lit of the sixties" focus, although it might more
appropriately be classified American studies/cultural studies. We
will be reading writers like Barthelme, Barth, Roth, Baldwin,
Vonnegut, Tim O'Brien, Brautigan, Albee, Castaneda, Shulman,
Plath--all "mainstream"--because we'll want to look at the
literary experimentation of the period AND the literature as a
reflection of what was going on in the culture at the time.
We'll look at primary documents for speeches, news reports, and
essays (many included in Bloom and Breines' book) and important
works by Carson, Kozol, Nader, Friedan, Steinem, and others, and
poetry particularly from counterculture/left writers who don't
appear in large press anthologies. Well, there's a start on my
ideal anthology. Maybe larger publishers (and college teachers
and students) would be more receptive to an anthology that did
try to bring together street/outsider/counterculture work (both
fiction and non-fiction) with some of the more interesting 60's
writers who have some standing in the 60's "canon," looking at
that term VERY broadly and with a smile.
Thanks again for the help.
Tom Denton denton@sunydutchess.edu