The Begatting of a Revolution: Weird Book Artifact #1
Wherefore the young rebels made war with the Establishment and there was a mighty battle. And the ranks of the elders fell back in a hail of obscenities, for the young men had fashioned a deadly missile which they made in this wise: they gathered together the chronicles writ in the Underground Press and forged them into a fiery weapon which speweth forth a foul stream of profundity. And they called it the F Bomb.
— Myron Roberts and Sasha Gilien, The Begatting of a Revolution (p. 19)
This little 45-page-long satirical booklet is a beautifully weird political artifact of American history. Published by Triad Books in 1970, with the dust of the dying hippie movement settling over the land, it chronicles the political and culture war of 1960s America in overly serious language, as though a book of the Holy Bible.
The book is satire that would probably never find an audience today because it takes aim at all sides of the battle. It makes fun of the Students for a Democratic Society (part of which evolved into the Weather Underground domestic terror organization) just as much as it rips on Nixon, Spiro Agnew, and even Doctor Spock.
Or, so it appears to me in my reading. I can’t detect any one position that’s being favored. Everyone is equal game for ridicule. I guess only South…
