Antislick to Postslick: DIY Books and Youth Culture Then and Now

Abstract

. . . elegance is decadent- and we can't have that during wartime - elegance is only acceptable if it's pasted together, with spit and glue, from detritus of a tooprosperous/too ridiculous world. (Dave Eggers) God bless hippies; they loved anything ugly. (Garry Knox Bennett) The material and social of America in 1 960s and early 1 970s is a subject of persistent fascination and critical attention. Books, articles, and essays have discussed 1960s art movements, design, music, theater, and even cookbooks produced by communes (Hartman). But craft, as practiced by laypeople as opposed to professional artisans, has remained largely unexamined. This period saw a steep rise in popularity of making by hand, from woodworking and weaving to needlework and pottery. Now, after subsiding in popularity through 1960s except among deeply committed, craft is again receiving significant public attention in first decade of twenty-first century. As recent cover stories in Publishers Weekly suggest, American craft publishing is booming, even in midst of recession (Martinez 24). There is an increasing body of scholarly work on craft in new millennium, in United States and overseas (Bratich; Parkins), but little has yet been written that compares two time periods. Both 1960s and early twenty-first century upsurges in hand making are notable for their involvement of young adults, working outside of any tradition handed them by their forebears. Both gained ground in face of war and growing energy crises, at times when status quo in terms of resource use and consumption is often challenged. Both express a fundamental disillusionment with big structures, be they governmental or private, that comes out of war, instability, and economic uncertainty, whether Vietnam or Iraq, Bay of Pigs, or September 11. Political activism and social criticism bubble just beneath surface of each. These two waves also differ in meaningful ways, and books written as instructional guides to crafts provide a useful window on Zeitgeist of each period. The 196575 craft books discussed here were generally aimed at young, and more specifically at counterculture subset of young; similarly, a majority of books published since 2000 is aimed not at all knitters or crocheters or embroiderers, but under-thirty subset that finds itself newly intrigued with recreational handcrafts (Tartakovsky 59). This is an area ripe for investigation. What are these creative impulses a response to? And how does publishing react to and reflect these waves of interest on part of new and potential makers? The do-it-yourself books of Flower Child era had many parents. Chief among them was agrarian, simple-living ethos promulgated by Scott and Helen Nearing in their hugely influential 1954 book Living Good Life, a chronicle of twenty years of rural homesteading by couple, vegetarian political activists who took up small-scale farming in Vermont in midst of Great Depression. The Nearings' life work- they built their stone house themselves and wrote extensively about maple sugaring- stood for self-sufficiency and against mass production, large centralized economic systems, and the yoke of a competitive, acquisitive, predatory culture (Nearing xix). Later works, like Alicia Bay Laurel's immensely popular Living on Earth, published in 1970 (the same year renewed interest prompted a reprinting of Nearings' book), would interpret that ethos for hippie back-to-thelanders. Living on Earth, a self-styled handbook for alternative living, includes instructions on pickling; hatha yoga; salting fish; growing marijuana; identifying cloud formations; wrapping a sari and giving birth at home; as well as on woodcarving; soapmaking; patchwork; making toys; moccasins, and musical instruments; weaving; and sewing simple garments. …