THREE AMERICAN TRIBUTARIES OF THE COUNTERCULTURAL FLOWS
THREE AMERICAN TRIBUTARIES OF THE COUNTERCULTURAL FLOWS

Summary/Abstract: The current study aims at capturing several important American voices in the 1950s and 1960s, contributing to that age’s dynamism and ideological polyphony. Some of the texts and voices that contributed to the emergence of what can be considered the countercultural ethos of the mid sixties and early seventies can be traced further back into the previous decade, with Allen Ginsberg’s Howl featuring prominently. Heller’s novel Catch-22 and Kesey’s One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, published in the early 1960s, will complete here the inevitably incomplete pattern of the defining culturescape of the age. These three artistic landmarks will also be considered here as three tributaries to what will, a few years later, turn to be the mighty American countercultural river, in which rebellion and nonconformism pose serious challenges to a mainstream culture of indulgent consensus.

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