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Question: Isn't that the same question I just asked, what did the sixties really accomplish?

Answer: Probably, but you know there's no point in my trying to settle that question for you. The sixties and I are rapidly becoming the past but you're history. Your generation will be passing judgment on what the sixties meant. You don't get the last word, of course, but you do get the next one. Figure out for yourself what it meant. This exhibit is a great place to start because it brings together the central texts of the period, and puts them in a context that includes some of the most important 19th and 20th century precursors of the representative minds of the sixties. There are plenty of revelations here, even for old-timers like me. There are voices I'd forgotten about, relationships and patterns I'd never noticed before. And it all looks new and strange laid out as the past in these exhibition cases. This is not, thank Mnemosyne, a media event. Some of the great images from the sixties are on display, and it's probably too bad that you can't play rock'n'roll LOUD in a library. But it's easy to be distracted by mere sights and sounds. The texts, the ideas, the visions, represented here will give you a chance to decide where the sixties came from, and where that generation was trying to go. I know, I know, you want to know exactly where all this did get to. With the things that really matter, though, like love or peace or freedom, you never get there once and for all. You just have to keep going toward them. In these exhibit cases you can see the steps we tried to take in those directions.

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Stephen Railton
Balding Hippie & Professor of English Language and Literature, University of Virginia