Famous Long Ago: My Life and Hard Times with Liberation News Service, at Total Loss Farm and on the Dharma Trail

By Raymond Mungo

Book Overview

Originally published in 1970, Raymond Mungo's picaresque account of his adventures with Liberation News Service in the wild years of 1967 and 1968 has been variously described as youthful, passionate, lyrical, demented, and an iconic symbol of the sixties counterculture. A review in The Nation described it as "hip Huck Finn."

A college editor at the height of the Vietnam War, Mungo found himself smack in the middle of a mad swirl of activism and dissent, vigorously protesting every-thing from the draft to abortion laws to the university itself. Then he connected with Marshall Bloom to cofound LNS in Washington, D.C., as a news service catering to the burgeoning underground press. One thing led to another, until LNS, like so many other radical organizations, eventually disintegrated into violently warring factions. Mungo's memoir tracks its development and destruction with wicked humor and literary panache.

In an introduction to this new edition, John McMillian discusses the enduring appeal of Famous Long Ago and situates it within its broader historical context, while the author provides his own retrospective take in a new afterword.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1558499474
• ISBN13: 9781558499478
• Release Date: March 2012
• Publisher: University of Massachusetts Press
• Length: 232 Pages
• Weight: 0.78 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.5" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

One of the best of the 1960s autobiographies

It's a shame that this book is out of print, because it tells the story of one man's adventures in a unique time and place in a way that is less successfully done in other such books. Mungo was there at the creation, and he (usually) doesn't gloss over the failings of the hippies' original vision. The book is witty and opinionated, well-written and amusing - and if you're interested in the 1960s you should seek out copies in your nearby library or other such repository. Mungo's life during those intense years covered in the book (which is circa 1965 through about 1971) traced nearly the entire stereotpical path of the 1960s hippie: from the Haight to political action in Washington and elsewhere (as a member of the Liberation News Service), to a comically unsuccessful stand as a back-to-the-lander communitarian, to a wandering journey to the 'sources of enlightenment' in Asia. The book shows just how it was possible to become entirely burnt out with innovation in just a six or seven year period, and illustrates well the trajectory of the 1960s, from ideal to disillusion to acceptance. And it's well-written.