The 1960s
If, like me, you were not yet born in the 1960s, it can take a bit of effort to comprehend the 60s-ness in some of the cultural endeavours of that decade. It is strange to think, for example, that a famous writer like Gabriel García Márquez wrote One Hundred Years of Solitude with ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ on his turntable, or that Doris Lessing was once considered as way out as Captain Beefheart. This is partly because different kinds of artists get invested with different kinds of cultural authority. But later developments play a part as well. A lot of 60s stuff that is now thought of as ‘postmodern’ has acquired a rather sleek and technocratic aura, much as the acid-tripping Steve Jobs eventually brought us the iMac.