In her column today Ammo Grrrll cites Abbie Hoffman’s Steal This Book with some disdain, though her disdain may be directed more at the man than the book. Steal This Book remains in print and is indeed available (at the link) in a 50th anniversary edition from a publisher under the umbrella of Hachette Book Group.
I actually bought and read the book in its original Grove paperback edition in 1971. I found it on the rack at the bookstore inside the department store in Boston’s Prudential Center. Was it Brentano’s?
That first edition has become a collector’s item. I wish I had held onto it. It would fit on my bookshelf nicely between other relics of the era such as 1001 Ways to Beat the Draft (1967), by Tuli Kupferberg of the Fugs and Robert Bashlow, also published by Grove, and Quotations From Chairman LBJ (1968), by Jack Sheperd and Christopher Wren, published by Simon and Schuster.
1001 Ways was satirical without being funny. Quotations came in a little red book that mimicked the form of Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book. Quotations was full of mocking humor with unintentionally funny LBJ quotes.
Hoffman’s book was intentionally funny, at least in part. Contrary to what you might think from the title, it was a self-help book for those living with no visible means of support. At one point Hoffman advised that if you are impecunious, and you’re not on welfare, you’re lazy!
If we put mental illness to one side, that must be even truer today than it was when Hoffman exhaled it. Benefit programs have proliferated to such an extent that the invention of new ones has become a challenge. Consider Minnesota’s Housing Stabilization Services program.
The thought inspires me to borrow Wordsworth’s formulation in “London, 1802”: Hoffman, thou shouldst be living at this hour…
