I was born before the baby boom and by the 1970s was already endeavoring to support a family. I've never bought into the decade business, actually. The '60s people refer to really didn't get going until after '65 - I was in college from 1960 to 1964 and those four years were pretty much indistinguishable from the '50s. My favorite decade would be 1945 to 1955, for reasons I may someday expatiate upon. The '5os is the decade that really deserves reassessment. Tennessee Williams, William Inge, and Robert Anderson wrote some very good plays. There was quite a bit of good classical musical written in the U.S. then (Ned Rorem's three symphonies, John LaMontaine's Pulitzer-winning piano concerto). Some fabulous films came out (On the Waterfront, All About Eve, Marty), and some pretty good books (Conrad Richter's The Town, Herman Wouk's The Caine Mutiny - which became another great film).
I'm with you, Frank, both chronologically and what you said. Once I read someone of our age, not Boomers but not exactly Depression kids, call himself a "Roosevelt kid" -- meaning age, not politics. But boy am I with you about the 1950s. Almost everyone gets the decade wrong, regardless of what you say the parameters -- a non-'50s word, thank God -- were. Jeffrey Hart wrote a book, "When the Going Was Good! American Life in the Fifties." Why he ever put, or let the publisher put, that exclamation point in the title is beyond me, but my own point is that in the book he says the Fifties began in June 1944, when Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower gave the command to launch the Normandy invasion. Hart’s book gets the Fifties righter than most, but that seems too far back to me. The Henry J hadn’t even been produced yet. Closer to your own preference for 1945-55 is Joseph Gould's book, "The Best Years," extolling the postwar years up to (and somewhat through) the Korean War.
ReplyDelete