Gordon and Pynchon

Having only two selections to read and write about this week, and not finding anything to comment on with the first poetry selection, I am left to write on Andrew Gordon's text, "Smoking Dope with Thomas Pynchon: A Sixties Memoir."
While this was an entertaining piece to read, I was not influenced with much in the way of response or commentary, but I will give it a shot.
Gordon wrote that "they were no joke, they really happened to us, and they really happened to me" in response to America in the 1960s. I think that that idea might get lost on us as modern students in this class. We study the 1960s as something that has happened, can be analyzed and commented on. However, it might serve us to be constantly reminded that this actually happened to real people who are among us today. We read and watch footage of sit ins, 1960s drug culture, Woodstock and other concerts, but I think we fail to associate them with the humanity they touched and affected. The 1960s gets lost into the pop culture image of a "hippie" or the black and white text that is in our book for us to read as part of a mandated assignment.
Gordon went on to write that "if somebody told you the history of the decade as a story, you wouldn't believe it. You'd wonder: is this for real? Is it some kind of joke?" To elaborate on what i mentioned before, I think Gordon is wrong. I think that now as students we see it more as a story of the times. We don't know what the culture was like, at least not first hand, and things have changed so much we see it as history. History that is being presented to us in a story form. These are the people, so different and unique you can see them as characters. These are the things they did which is so far from your own reality, they can be seen as events in a long running plot. Here is Altamont and the end to the sixties, the resolution to that plot that was 10-15 years in the making. I ultimately disagree with Gordon, I think we see the 60s as some type of idolized and unfathomable story sometimes that, no matter how much research and information we gather, can only be understood and described by someone who was actually there and had the 60s happen TO them.