An insightful biography that paints provocateur extraordinaire
Abbie Hoffman as the paradigm of the 1960s. Raskin (Communication
Studies/Sonoma State Univ.), a longtime confederate of Hoffman's,
writes against a handicap: His obligation as a biographer is to
make sense of Hoffman's life, but Hoffman's genius was in creative
nonsense, in thumbing his nose (and other parts of his anatomy) at
just such attempts at intellectualization. Indeed, descriptions of
Abbot Howard Hoffman's upbringing in a middle-class Jewish
household in Worcester, Mass., and his early attempts at family and
career seem so out of sync with his later, radicalized persona,
that readers new to Hoffman might wonder why such a boringly normal
guy deserves a serious academic biography. But Raskin, wisely, does
not attempt here to capture the essence of Hoffman's
antiestablishment theatrics. Instead, the author presents Hoffman
as the quintessential 1960s figure: "The arc of his biography
intersected with the trajectory of history." Hoffman understood
better than most leftists that America had entered a media age
where linear "thoughts were out; icons and images were in," and he
knew what outrageous forms would get the most coverage in the media
- such as throwing dollar bills onto the floor of the New York
Stock Exchange, a la Jesus and the money changers at the Temple.
Hoffman, in his ability to call attention to America's injustices
and discontents, embodied the triumphs of the '60s. And then,
Raskin argues, his 1989 suicide, at age 52, epitomized its
failures. Madison Avenue coopted the movement's symbols, and
"radicals and hippies . . . fell into the ranks of respectability."
The cultural, generational, nonideological revolution waged by
Hoffman and his fellow Yippies simply could not be sustained
outside the context of the 1960s. Raskin's Hoffman is as flawed and
compelling, brilliant and obtuse as the America against which he
protested. Raskin puts Hoffman into his American context and offers
fascinating insight into both. (Kirkus Reviews)
"Raskin's biography of Abbie Hoffman pleases precisely because it
does not evade the ambiguities of that wild time. For a cynical
age, Raskin evokes some of its innocent pleasures: great
rock-and-roll, movements against injustices, exuberant
sex."--Jonathan Rieder, "New York Times Book Review
"As much a corrective to a New Left history of the time as a
biography of Abbie Hoffman, the wildest of the wildmen...Raskin's
book is arranged like a series of filmed calender pages; behind the
pages stand descriptions as vivid as movies of the formative
influences moving with lightning speed across those few amazing
years while Abbie, and the rhetoric inside him, grew
apace."--Vivian Gornick, "The Nation
"Hoffman remains one of the most vivid figures in an era that
specialized in them...It would be very hard to read his life's
story and not be affected by it."--Jonathan Yardley, "Washington
Post
"The book takes [Hoffman], his w ritings, and his politics
seriously...Well-researched, well-reported, well-illustrated, and
scrupulously documented."--Bruce McCabe, "Boston Globe
"Not only a biography of an individual...but a fully rounded
portrait of that era...Hoffman remains an utterly fascinating
American icon, one of the most important performance-art patriots
of our time."--Bernard Weiner, "San Francisco Chronicle
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