Rex Murphy

Gore Vidal once described Moby Dick as “a very bad masterpiece,” and most readers will understand exactly what he meant. Notwithstanding the book’s mythic grandeur, that huge chapter on “the whiteness of the whale,” for instance, has to be one of the most indigestible bits of fiction ever written. It was in the same spirit as Vidal’s observation that the LRC editorial staff planned this December’s holiday…

Arguably the most enduring aphorism about the 1960s is the often repeated “If you can remember the 1960s you weren’t there.” The line is a clever little pseudo-koan that incorporates a double punch—a putdown of all those straight types who stayed out of the sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll of those allegedly halcyon days (and have the brain cells to prove it) and an implicit self-congratulation to the more…