Unfortunately, its subject – the beat generation – and language is too cold-war to be of any real use and interest in the 21st century.

We live increasingly in a system in which little direct attention is paid to the object, the functino, the program, the task, the need; but immense attention to the role, procedure, presige and profit…the system is inefficient; the overhead is high; the task is rarely done with love, style and excitement, for such beauties emerge only from absorption in real objects; sometimes the task is not done at all; and those who could do it best become either cynical or resigned. [Turning then to the young, which are the focus of this book,] I assume that the young really need a more worth-while world in order to grow up at all, and I confront this real need wiht the world that they have been getting. This is the source of their problems. Our problem is to remedy the disproportion.