Putting Dylan and the ‘60s in context

I read Sandra Kreiswirth’s letter regarding Ann Powers’ article on the new movie about Bob Dylan [Letters, Nov. 18].

This is parody, right? Every time I reluctantly pick up your paper there is more reverent sermonizing on the “glory days” of my generation. Let’s clear something up right away: The ‘60s were a period of unparalleled foolishness, a toxic mixture of hubris and naivete.

Reading your Opinion, Book Review and Calendar sections in recent weeks, I’ve had to double check to make sure I wasn’t reading Rolling Stone. First, there was the cover story on a new Gram Parsons biography and the following week’s big piece on the self-important ramblings of a whole crop of ‘60s has-beens. You can’t escape the sense that your editorial staff has the same misplaced sense of nostalgia for the ‘60s that it does for the old Soviet Union.

Do we really need to honor the “achievements” of what I call the feckless generation, a bunch of pampered fools who raised narcissism to an art form, when it seems their heroes all tended to end up drowned in their own vomit?

Stephen Quinn

Huntington Beach

I enjoyed Ann Powers’ article on Dylan and “I’m Not There” [“Tangled Up in Clues,” Nov. 11]. Some recent posts on stereophile.com discuss this year’s Austin City Limits Music Festival and Dylan’s poor singing, which begat several anecdotes about botched concerts he gave.

I think seeing history being made trumps entertainment value. I remember being an eighth-grader in Catholic school in La Mirada in 1965 and how Dylan’s albums blew us away. I saw “Don’t Look Back” at Cal State Fullerton in 1970. I saw Dylan with Leon Russell in 1972. He was electrifying, yet such a reluctant music icon. He always struggled with the incongruity of art, fame and popular culture, which is why I think his gravelly voice is a mark of defiance.

Roger Vance

Crescent City

Writers’ might

TWO polls give a 63% or higher approval rating to the writers in the current strike, yet Lynn Smith’s article [“Pitched Battle,” Nov. 18] quotes publicist after pundit expressing skepticism about how the writers are doing. If George Bush had a 63% approval rating, the papers would be filled with adulatory paeans to his success and examinations of how he pulled it off. And yet when writers, who have nearly no benefit from previous name recognition, achieve this degree of support, all we hear is paragraph after paragraph of “Yeah, but wait till January.”

Brian Nelson

Woodland Hills