Shortly after surviving the year 1968, I took to calling it “the year of the national mass nervous breakdown.” In the 56 years since, as I have studied the history of that year, I have run across nothing to change my mind about calling it that.
Thanks for the book review, Tom. And, yes I remember 1968 well. I was studying biology and chemistry at Sacramento State College working as hard as I could on Bobby Kennedy's Presidential campaign simultaneously still working on anti-Vietnam War, Civil Rights and raising my 2 daughters and my step son. I remember it as a year of heartbreak, disappointment, and a feeling of failure. After Bobby was murdered, I pretty much gave up.
I was a somewhat precocious 16 year old hanging out with my older sister in San Francisco in 1968. Taking in the most amazing music at the Fillmore and Avalon usually with some psychedelics on board. We also protested the Viet Nam war, and cried our eyes out when Bobby and MLK were assassinated. Watched the moon landing with awe and went to see 2001 Space Odyssey several times on and off acid trying to figure out the end of the movie. It was a very tumultuous year that had immense impact on me and the person I grew into. I look forward to reading Lawrence’s book.
I did watch in a sort of enhanced state (hashish, of course) with a bunch of friends. I thought it was cool, but also had a sense it was hollow at its core and I had no idea what the ending meant. it was only when I read the novel (or novelization...I'm not quite sure) that it became clear. this pissed me off, because the movie actually DID leave out the key information. I watched again recently and (as I feel about virtually every Kubrick movie after "Spartacus") it struck me as soulless and VERY hollow. I realize this is a minority position, but I can think of five Howard Hawks movies I'd rather see than ANY Kubrick movie (except for "Paths of Glory," which is a legitimate masterpiece--remember the last scene of the German girl singing while all the old soldiers cry? FANTASTIC and beautiful).
they should never have released "Eyes Wide Shut." it felt to me like Kubrick knew it was so bad, he decided to die before it opened.
he DID, however, learn his trade at CCNY, which had a film school before any other school in the city. but then again, if you were a poor Bronx Jew, you were bound to learn your trade at CCNY. I'm wearing a CCNY t-shirt as we speak.
and my 1968 took place mostly on the South Campus lawn and cafeteria. I made a lifelong friend by leaving a cute graffito in the student center men's room; "America killed Dylan Thomas, Charlie Parker and (I forget the third name) and it's given me COLITIS" which he quoted to me and of course I screamed "motherfucker, THAT WAS ME."
I pretty much agree, though as an Arthur C. Clarke fan I do appreciate 2001.
I particularly love the fact that the million-year "jump forward," in which the bone becomes a satellite orbiting the earth was the result of Kubrick "burning off" 50 feet of 16mm film left in his camera (that he used to see where he had gone wrong with a scene) as he and Clarke walked back to the production office after the waterhole scene was filmed - Kubrick tossing the bone and shooting it. They had been arguing for weeks over how to make the transition, and that night they watched the dailies, and there was Kubrick's "burn off" and they both realized that was "it."
Obv the creators of the movie were in a very enhanced state. It was one of a few movies I have ever seen that I decided then and there it was not meant to ever be figured out.
And I never have decided if that was a good thing or not. As far as filmmaking goes. A part of me felt snubbed by elitist creative freedom.
Someone asked me once if I wanted to watch it again years later. My response? F*ck no. LOL
Artur c. Clarke once wrote that "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." I think that applies to "2001."
My father used to love telling how he was contacted by the filmmakers in 1965, as a "leading scientist" they were contacting to ask for his prediction of the state of technology in 2001, as they were creating their world. His prediction was that by then solid state electronics would be released for civilian use "and then I bought my first solid-state TV the next year."
I hope you are doing well David. I love Jubal’s picture. I was compelled to change my avatar to my precious late Natalie, and her best friend Tommy cat who is still with me.
It's a great book. It the aftermath, we almost - almost got rid of the Electoral College. It was the year my parents got divorced, my dad got remarried and moved to Windsor, my grandmother died and the Tigers won the World Series. I turned 10, was in my second year of boarding school in Jamestown, N.D. (It was called the Crippled Children's School) and getting bombarded with b.s. religion.
(Lawrence O’Donnell is 72? I guess that’s what clean living can do for you.)
I remember 1968, not as a distinct year but as the series of events you outlined. Although I was only 10, it was the year I first started to watch network news, the first year I realized that there were nightly death counts from a place in Asia, the year I started to understand what politics was and how dangerous it could be. I remember the fear over the MLK Jr. assassination and I remember the broadcast from the Ambassador Hotel. I remember staying up to get the election results.
well I've got Audible's version, and it's really some well-produced product
I've dipped into it since it appeared on Amazon, but now I plan on a real reading, all the way through. from those first dips it seemed very accurate historically, even while it demonstrated a real passion for the material.
I was fifteen in 1963 and vividly remember my mother screaming when Walter Cronkite announced President Kennedy had been assassinated. The next five years I read everything I could about the Kennedys. Bobby's entrance into the 1968 presidential race was a burst of excitement. I was twenty and filled with the naive optimism of youth. I watched Bobby's speech after winning the California primary and turned off the TV. Next morning I woke to news Bobby had been shot. It was a tumultuous time.
Burl Burlingame used to say “If you remember 1968, you weren’t there.” What a f’ed up year that was, from Tet to Tricky Dick getting the Presidency to astronauts orbiting the moon, which was about the only bright spot of the whole year. That was the year I turned 18, with the realization that I was draft eligible to be sent to the meat grinder in Vietnam sorta putting things of my future prospects into perspective really clearly. I saw the reports on TV of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy getting gunned down, the debacle that was the DNC in Chicago, the riots and fires in the cities, and wondered what the Hell was going on? The years have come and gone, but 1968 was the pits and that tumultuous year set events in motion that have led to the craziness of 2024…interesting times indeed.
Thank you Tom. As I said a day or so ago, we bought a copy when Lawrence asked us to do him the favor. I can't wait to read it. You are a few years older than I and every so often you peel another layer of the onion away. Lucian does that a bit, once in a while. I am beginning to actually understand you. What you have done is one thing, but peeling away the layers is revealing of much more.
I bailed on the California Maritime Academy in January, 1968. My 1-A arrived a week later and I enbarked upon a long battle with my draft board, intending to see them in court and making the case to have them indicted for War Crimes. They knew it and I played their system well. The head of the local board was a retired USAF Desk Pilot who could often be seen walking down our block in his Dress Blues. with all his all his paper speed pushing pins on his chest. He hated my father and it was his mission to get me. As you know, my Dad was a decorated combat pilot.
Several years and many Student Deferements later, a high school classmate fire bombed the Santa Cruz Selective Service office and all my records dissapeared, along with my check mate letter that I had sent to them a few weeks earlier. I was as disappointed as I was relieved. I had a very good lawyer and was planning to refuse induction one more time and make the case to get them or go to jail. Lottery #15
As to Dress Blues, a CMA upper class man was on the front page of the San Francisco Chronicle at the top steps of City Hall in his Dress Blues during a massive anti war march and rally. The FBI came looking for him after they could not find a US Navy officer who looked like him and our ROTC unis were identical..
Thems was the days. It has been said that if you can remember them, you must not have been there.
well said, Karen. you and me both. but then I'm aware now that I had this sort detached, gimlet-eyed (even a tad jaundiced) point of view, courtesy of nowhere I can account for
In college in ‘68, now remembering both a lot and very little - much of that time is a blur for all the obvious reasons. Ordered the O’Donnell book - thanks.
In 1968 Detroit rejuvenated its civil rights riots from the previous year. No gasoline could be sold in containers. People in the suburbs where I lived were fearful the riots would spread and we'd be forced to do the low crawl in our own homes. Every siren sent chills. My little son was having night terrors. I took him to the doctor. The doctor told me to turn off the television. I did. The night terrors stopped.
I enlisted in the Navy and left for boot camp at Great Lakes, IL in 1967. In 1968, I was an AQFAN training at the NAS in Millington, TN. I was attending night classes at the University of TN in Memphis, TN adding to my undergraduate credits that I had accumulated in 1965-1967 at Butler University in Indianapolis, ID. I was staying at a Holiday Inn Junior in Memphis the morning that MLK was assassinated. I hitch hiked from Memphis to Millington that day. From Millington, I transferred to VF-101 at fighter training squadron at NAS Oceania in Virginia Beach, VA. We trained new pilots for their air craft qualifications to serve in WestPac during the war.
Living on Naval bases in Illinois, Tennessee, and eventually Virginia was a social and political adjustment for a young person who had been born in Worcester, MA and lived in the east before beginning an undergraduate education in Indiana. After being discharged from the Navy, I returned to Northampton, MA in 1971 to finish my undergraduate degree in English at the University of MA in Amherst. U-Mass in Amherst, MA was not a Cambridge, MA anti-war atmosphere. Obviously, neither were the atmospheres of Tennessee nor Virginia. The GI Bill VA benefits paid for the rest of my undergraduate education. My war experience was very different than some of my fellow South High School students who went to war in the Pacific and did not survive to return to Massachusetts when their military duty was completed.
I was 12 years old, listening to music on my FM radio when I was supposed to be asleep (it was way past my bedtime on the east coast). Suddenly, the announcer broke in that RFK had been shot. I was shocked, and got up to talk to my parents. On top of what had already happened that year, this was a pivotal moment in my young life. The world seemed so unhinged to me...
The book is just getting re-released in trade paperback. Check amazon next week. There are copies of the last paperback edition for sale there for $11.
I came of political age in 1968 -- I turned 17 that June. I took it all in but didn't know much of the backstory. It helps explain why I had very little to do with electoral politics until 2016. (Other factors: until 1985 I lived mostly in D.C., where you couldn't vote for much of anything, and since I was a feminist, there wasn't much to vote for till the '90s. Bill Clinton did a lot to sour me on the Democrats, and by then of course the Republicans were unspeakable.)
I was drafted in Dec of '66, and by the time they were done with all their training and indoctrination of me I was ready for the celebration of Tet in '68. So yeah, I sort of missed the politics and all the rest of that year.
But I bought the book and man did it answer a lot of questions for me.
In 1968, I turned 14, so I come under the "puzzled by what I saw happening on my parent's tv" heading. In 1972, I had already learned some things in college (but not many, since I had only been there for two months) and my first vote was an absentee ballot sent from college, for George McGovern.
Thanks for the book review, Tom. And, yes I remember 1968 well. I was studying biology and chemistry at Sacramento State College working as hard as I could on Bobby Kennedy's Presidential campaign simultaneously still working on anti-Vietnam War, Civil Rights and raising my 2 daughters and my step son. I remember it as a year of heartbreak, disappointment, and a feeling of failure. After Bobby was murdered, I pretty much gave up.
I was a somewhat precocious 16 year old hanging out with my older sister in San Francisco in 1968. Taking in the most amazing music at the Fillmore and Avalon usually with some psychedelics on board. We also protested the Viet Nam war, and cried our eyes out when Bobby and MLK were assassinated. Watched the moon landing with awe and went to see 2001 Space Odyssey several times on and off acid trying to figure out the end of the movie. It was a very tumultuous year that had immense impact on me and the person I grew into. I look forward to reading Lawrence’s book.
It was even harder to figure out 2001 if you saw it in an "enhanced" state. :-)
I did watch in a sort of enhanced state (hashish, of course) with a bunch of friends. I thought it was cool, but also had a sense it was hollow at its core and I had no idea what the ending meant. it was only when I read the novel (or novelization...I'm not quite sure) that it became clear. this pissed me off, because the movie actually DID leave out the key information. I watched again recently and (as I feel about virtually every Kubrick movie after "Spartacus") it struck me as soulless and VERY hollow. I realize this is a minority position, but I can think of five Howard Hawks movies I'd rather see than ANY Kubrick movie (except for "Paths of Glory," which is a legitimate masterpiece--remember the last scene of the German girl singing while all the old soldiers cry? FANTASTIC and beautiful).
they should never have released "Eyes Wide Shut." it felt to me like Kubrick knew it was so bad, he decided to die before it opened.
he DID, however, learn his trade at CCNY, which had a film school before any other school in the city. but then again, if you were a poor Bronx Jew, you were bound to learn your trade at CCNY. I'm wearing a CCNY t-shirt as we speak.
and my 1968 took place mostly on the South Campus lawn and cafeteria. I made a lifelong friend by leaving a cute graffito in the student center men's room; "America killed Dylan Thomas, Charlie Parker and (I forget the third name) and it's given me COLITIS" which he quoted to me and of course I screamed "motherfucker, THAT WAS ME."
was that a tangent? or was it fractal?
I could continue...on and on and on...
I pretty much agree, though as an Arthur C. Clarke fan I do appreciate 2001.
I particularly love the fact that the million-year "jump forward," in which the bone becomes a satellite orbiting the earth was the result of Kubrick "burning off" 50 feet of 16mm film left in his camera (that he used to see where he had gone wrong with a scene) as he and Clarke walked back to the production office after the waterhole scene was filmed - Kubrick tossing the bone and shooting it. They had been arguing for weeks over how to make the transition, and that night they watched the dailies, and there was Kubrick's "burn off" and they both realized that was "it."
that's the best moment in the movie. unfortunately, it comes about five minutes in...
the third name was, of course, Lenny Bruce, who was only about three months gone at that point (Fall '66).
Obv the creators of the movie were in a very enhanced state. It was one of a few movies I have ever seen that I decided then and there it was not meant to ever be figured out.
And I never have decided if that was a good thing or not. As far as filmmaking goes. A part of me felt snubbed by elitist creative freedom.
Someone asked me once if I wanted to watch it again years later. My response? F*ck no. LOL
Salud!
🗽💜
Artur c. Clarke once wrote that "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." I think that applies to "2001."
My father used to love telling how he was contacted by the filmmakers in 1965, as a "leading scientist" they were contacting to ask for his prediction of the state of technology in 2001, as they were creating their world. His prediction was that by then solid state electronics would be released for civilian use "and then I bought my first solid-state TV the next year."
they DID get the computer/AI thing right, alas.
ahhh...so you're my little sister's age.
the difference is that she's not worth talking TO and you are wonderful to talk WITH.
big difference.
I hope you are doing well David. I love Jubal’s picture. I was compelled to change my avatar to my precious late Natalie, and her best friend Tommy cat who is still with me.
It's a great book. It the aftermath, we almost - almost got rid of the Electoral College. It was the year my parents got divorced, my dad got remarried and moved to Windsor, my grandmother died and the Tigers won the World Series. I turned 10, was in my second year of boarding school in Jamestown, N.D. (It was called the Crippled Children's School) and getting bombarded with b.s. religion.
(Lawrence O’Donnell is 72? I guess that’s what clean living can do for you.)
I remember 1968, not as a distinct year but as the series of events you outlined. Although I was only 10, it was the year I first started to watch network news, the first year I realized that there were nightly death counts from a place in Asia, the year I started to understand what politics was and how dangerous it could be. I remember the fear over the MLK Jr. assassination and I remember the broadcast from the Ambassador Hotel. I remember staying up to get the election results.
I need to buy O’Donnell’s book.
well I've got Audible's version, and it's really some well-produced product
I've dipped into it since it appeared on Amazon, but now I plan on a real reading, all the way through. from those first dips it seemed very accurate historically, even while it demonstrated a real passion for the material.
so I'm returning!
I was fifteen in 1963 and vividly remember my mother screaming when Walter Cronkite announced President Kennedy had been assassinated. The next five years I read everything I could about the Kennedys. Bobby's entrance into the 1968 presidential race was a burst of excitement. I was twenty and filled with the naive optimism of youth. I watched Bobby's speech after winning the California primary and turned off the TV. Next morning I woke to news Bobby had been shot. It was a tumultuous time.
Burl Burlingame used to say “If you remember 1968, you weren’t there.” What a f’ed up year that was, from Tet to Tricky Dick getting the Presidency to astronauts orbiting the moon, which was about the only bright spot of the whole year. That was the year I turned 18, with the realization that I was draft eligible to be sent to the meat grinder in Vietnam sorta putting things of my future prospects into perspective really clearly. I saw the reports on TV of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy getting gunned down, the debacle that was the DNC in Chicago, the riots and fires in the cities, and wondered what the Hell was going on? The years have come and gone, but 1968 was the pits and that tumultuous year set events in motion that have led to the craziness of 2024…interesting times indeed.
Man I miss the weird sanity of Burl.
Yeah, it’s been five years since he departed this mortal coil…I wonder what pithy comments he would have about these crazy times.
They'd have been excellent. I can just see Burl as a Substack star.
Yep, he would have been great at that.
In 1968 my then husband was being sent to Vietnam. We had been in South Dakota - he was stationed at Ellsworth AFB. my world was filled with dread
Thank you Tom. As I said a day or so ago, we bought a copy when Lawrence asked us to do him the favor. I can't wait to read it. You are a few years older than I and every so often you peel another layer of the onion away. Lucian does that a bit, once in a while. I am beginning to actually understand you. What you have done is one thing, but peeling away the layers is revealing of much more.
I bailed on the California Maritime Academy in January, 1968. My 1-A arrived a week later and I enbarked upon a long battle with my draft board, intending to see them in court and making the case to have them indicted for War Crimes. They knew it and I played their system well. The head of the local board was a retired USAF Desk Pilot who could often be seen walking down our block in his Dress Blues. with all his all his paper speed pushing pins on his chest. He hated my father and it was his mission to get me. As you know, my Dad was a decorated combat pilot.
Several years and many Student Deferements later, a high school classmate fire bombed the Santa Cruz Selective Service office and all my records dissapeared, along with my check mate letter that I had sent to them a few weeks earlier. I was as disappointed as I was relieved. I had a very good lawyer and was planning to refuse induction one more time and make the case to get them or go to jail. Lottery #15
As to Dress Blues, a CMA upper class man was on the front page of the San Francisco Chronicle at the top steps of City Hall in his Dress Blues during a massive anti war march and rally. The FBI came looking for him after they could not find a US Navy officer who looked like him and our ROTC unis were identical..
Thems was the days. It has been said that if you can remember them, you must not have been there.
I remember enough to realize what I don’t
well said, Karen. you and me both. but then I'm aware now that I had this sort detached, gimlet-eyed (even a tad jaundiced) point of view, courtesy of nowhere I can account for
In college in ‘68, now remembering both a lot and very little - much of that time is a blur for all the obvious reasons. Ordered the O’Donnell book - thanks.
In 1968 Detroit rejuvenated its civil rights riots from the previous year. No gasoline could be sold in containers. People in the suburbs where I lived were fearful the riots would spread and we'd be forced to do the low crawl in our own homes. Every siren sent chills. My little son was having night terrors. I took him to the doctor. The doctor told me to turn off the television. I did. The night terrors stopped.
I enlisted in the Navy and left for boot camp at Great Lakes, IL in 1967. In 1968, I was an AQFAN training at the NAS in Millington, TN. I was attending night classes at the University of TN in Memphis, TN adding to my undergraduate credits that I had accumulated in 1965-1967 at Butler University in Indianapolis, ID. I was staying at a Holiday Inn Junior in Memphis the morning that MLK was assassinated. I hitch hiked from Memphis to Millington that day. From Millington, I transferred to VF-101 at fighter training squadron at NAS Oceania in Virginia Beach, VA. We trained new pilots for their air craft qualifications to serve in WestPac during the war.
Living on Naval bases in Illinois, Tennessee, and eventually Virginia was a social and political adjustment for a young person who had been born in Worcester, MA and lived in the east before beginning an undergraduate education in Indiana. After being discharged from the Navy, I returned to Northampton, MA in 1971 to finish my undergraduate degree in English at the University of MA in Amherst. U-Mass in Amherst, MA was not a Cambridge, MA anti-war atmosphere. Obviously, neither were the atmospheres of Tennessee nor Virginia. The GI Bill VA benefits paid for the rest of my undergraduate education. My war experience was very different than some of my fellow South High School students who went to war in the Pacific and did not survive to return to Massachusetts when their military duty was completed.
I was 12 years old, listening to music on my FM radio when I was supposed to be asleep (it was way past my bedtime on the east coast). Suddenly, the announcer broke in that RFK had been shot. I was shocked, and got up to talk to my parents. On top of what had already happened that year, this was a pivotal moment in my young life. The world seemed so unhinged to me...
Thank you for the book recommendation. I was 14 in 1968 and I remember the traumatic events.
I have been saying to everyone around me that the election of Richard Nixon set the stage for current events.
Also I just checked. The book is out of print. And not in my library system
The book is just getting re-released in trade paperback. Check amazon next week. There are copies of the last paperback edition for sale there for $11.
I came of political age in 1968 -- I turned 17 that June. I took it all in but didn't know much of the backstory. It helps explain why I had very little to do with electoral politics until 2016. (Other factors: until 1985 I lived mostly in D.C., where you couldn't vote for much of anything, and since I was a feminist, there wasn't much to vote for till the '90s. Bill Clinton did a lot to sour me on the Democrats, and by then of course the Republicans were unspeakable.)
I was drafted in Dec of '66, and by the time they were done with all their training and indoctrination of me I was ready for the celebration of Tet in '68. So yeah, I sort of missed the politics and all the rest of that year.
But I bought the book and man did it answer a lot of questions for me.
In 1968, I turned 14, so I come under the "puzzled by what I saw happening on my parent's tv" heading. In 1972, I had already learned some things in college (but not many, since I had only been there for two months) and my first vote was an absentee ballot sent from college, for George McGovern.