Another MULSA book sale remainder!
This volume consists of essays by Hoppe, previously published in the San Francisco Chronicle, on a variety of topics, including politics, the Vietnam War, birth control, Mother's Day, the arms race, and rutabagas. (Yes, rutabagas.) All of the essays were written in the mid-1960s, so a large portion of them deal with Vietnam and the Johnson administration.
Hoppe starts off, tongue firmly in cheek, by stating that the solution to overpopulation is... total birth control. As in absolutely no babies being born, period. He goes on to say that Mother's Day should be a national day of mourning, since mothers are to blame for every single bad thing that has ever happened. ("...extensive historical research shows that every evildoer, from Atilla the Hun to Adolf Hitler, had, somewhere in his background, a mother... If we wipe out Motherhood, we will unquestionably wipe out not only overpopulation, but war, soil erosion, dental caries, air pollution and people who cough on buses.") He warns against trusting anyone over thirty, as well as anyone under thirty, and advocates drinking courses for teenagers, as well as the legalization of bananas and other psychotropic drugs.
This book is a hilarious demonstration of how ridiculous so many things are, from politics to bigotry to xenophobia, and how we, as a people, take ourselves waaaay to seriously. If you're not familiar with the 1960s, some of the topics may be a bit confusing, but otherwise the book is very enjoyable.
No comments:
Post a Comment