• Debray, Garrel .... The hard fate of the children of '68

The most beloved books for any reader are those that talk about other books, those that revive and expand old readings or discover new treasures. Revolutionaries , by Joshua Furst (Impedimenta), is one of those works. The promotional notes speak of American Pastoral , of Philip Roth, but each reader can find their own links on the shelves at home. There are two examples: The body in which I was born , by Guadalupe Nettel, and Daughter of Revolutionaries , by Laurence Debray, are stories related to Revolutionaries . In all three books, a son of sixty-year-old parents tells of his lonely and ruleless childhoods and his almost miraculous survival.

A little memory: the problem of Nettel's parents in The body I live in was that sexual freedom and counterculture reached Mexico City and they did not have the maturity necessary not to be soaked with their sweetness . They were cheerful and irresponsible and a little self-destructive.

On the other hand, Laurence Debray's father (Régis Debray, the famous French journalist who accompanied Che Guevara in Bolivia ) had very serious problems communicating with the world and expressing emotions. His religious faith in the revolution was a way of staying together with reality, even if that meant abandoning his daughter in indifference. He was a man poorly prepared for life and did what he could to survive.

In Revolutionaries there is also a real father, Abbie Hoffman, although his name appears disguised with that of Lenny Synder. Everything else is recognizable: the bar and star shirts, his show at the Woodstock Festival (he interrupted a concert by The Who to give a speech and Pete Townshend knocked him off the stage), his hooligans, his arrests, his role in the Chicago riots of 1968 ... Hoffman was the salt of all political revolts in the United States between 1966 and 1973. The period that led from the journey of idealism to delirium. He committed suicide in 1989, at age 52, by the method of taking 150 pills against bipolar disorder .

In Revolutionaries , the story of Snyder / Hoffman is told by the activist's son, a poor kid who was given the name of Freedom but who begs Fred to be called . He lives precariously in a town in the state of New York and only hopes for life that his father's fans leave him alone. Until someone hits the key and Fred agrees to tell his story as in a great vomit of words. Revolutionaries is narrated in the form of a long oral, chaotic, painful and very lively speech.

What does Fred remember? First and foremost, the ambiguity of his father, the man who was to lead the moral revolution of the 60s but who, even at the time of greatest innocence, was also a small cynical. From Snyder / Hoffman we learn that it was a middle-class (almost poor) New York Jew who was kicked out of his college basketball team for betting and manipulating their matches. He fell into the Village without much to do and met the first hippies. Snyder had fun with them: they harangued them, invented them hooligans, took them money for drugs, slept with the girls, manipulated them a little and radicalized them . He knew celebrities (Allen Ginsberg, Phil Ochs) and they arrested him everywhere, but that was part of the game. Behind him he made fun of his fans and treated them as Columbia posh with a bad conscience, but what does it matter? He had discovered his talent and could live very well from him. He was a genius of the rampage, he was a leader.

Some moments of glory: the day he entered the New York Stock Exchange, he climbed into a box that looked out into the hiring room and dedicated himself to throwing tickets in the air ( stock brokers responded like chicks to those who throw corn ) Another day he filled the rooms of the Hyatt Hotel with rats.

A few lines ago the words "bipolar disorder" appeared, and there is no need to go many more times: the charisma, loquacity and ingenuity of Snyder / Hoffman responded to a manic peak in the bipolar cycle . The bad thing is that now it's time to talk about the descent.

Little by little, the great masquerade of the counterculture became something more serious. The Black Panthers, the Weather Underground and the Yippies appeared, terrorism appeared and Snyder discovered that he was only a clown lost in war , irrelevant and rather annoying . No one laughed at him, especially since he had a son whom he had introduced to the art of theft at age four and the pleasure of cannabis at age seven . He didn't take him to school to be freer but he gave him incomprehensible speeches about politics and history.

Another significant scene: Snyder appears having dinner with his son's mother and a couple of black nationalists. Everyone surpasses him in intellectual sophistication , so that the conversation is too complicated and too radical for him. But, instead of shutting up, Snyder is dedicated to sabotaging the talk with gossips, impertinences and sexual advances that are rejected. At that point, the descent into the depressive crisis begins.

In 1973, Snyder / Hoffman had already become the most dull and saddest cocaine dealer in New York. He was arrested, left on bail, tried to be a good father for a few months and then fled .

In the background, its history does remind of the American Pastoral of Philip Roth, who also counted the 60s as a way to slip into madness. That is why heroes become detestable villains and, in the end, they discover themselves as victims of the world and of themselves. And for that, the last lines of Joshua Furst in his book are of thanks: « Thanks to Abbie Hoffman -provocation, inspiration- for having existed, Now more than ever, we need her spirit ».

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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