The Wicker Pensky Chronicles: First Days of the Revolution

FIRST DAYS OF THE REVOLUTION is the story of a young man coming of age in the early 1960s, before the words ¿hippie¿ and ¿counterculture¿ had been coined, when disillusioned youths were just beginning to reject their culture and follow their own internal compasses. Wicker Pensky had been unhappy with his life for years: postwar America was prudish and banal, suburbia was spreading across the country like mayonnaise ¿ bland and monotonous, and the excitement of discovery had been sapped from the educational system. Wick wanted to live more freely and creatively than society allowed, and he longed to return to a more natural existence. He dropped out of college, set out to find a more libertarian lifestyle, and landed in the middle of the bohemian underground ¿ freewheeling and rife with eccentric characters. He lived in various utopian communities, including a Walden Two, and ran with a troupe of actors dabbling in Shakespeare and street theater. His experiences and relationships allowed him to finally express and explore his feelings. Wick¿s observations and insights, salted with humor and peppered with ironies, vividly portray the people he encountered ¿ a growing population of rebels and misfits like himself ¿ and capture the excitement of those revolutionary times.