The Story of the Writing of Happily Hippie-American

Good writing is reader friendly. It’s accessible, interesting and informative. At its best, it can change people and this world. Good writing has a voice that’s well-informed, sensible, fair and calm but also business like and that won’t waste a reader’s time. A good writer should be like a friend the reader is about to take a brisk walk with, will enjoy spending time with, and at book’s end, will feel that time has been well spent. In this book, I, Paul Dougan, have accomplished these things, and that’s gratifying.

All successful art is a combination of entertainment and instruction, of form and content. This book, or parts of it, could be dry, stiff and dull like some misbegotten Ph.D. dissertation. Although the book has the academic rigor it needs to be taken seriously, I have created a down-to-earth, relatively informal tone that’s comfortable and personable. I don’t talk down to readers; I talk to them. For a non-fiction book to work, it helps to have a personality, and readers need to like that personality.

Writing Happily Hippie-American, I found I was crafting a mixture of genres: expository/explanatory where necessary, argumentative/editorial when proving main points, narrative when telling anecdotes and personal stories, and lastly, humorous and happy to lighten the journey and make our stroll enjoyable. No one wants to walk with a dullard, a bore or a grump.

Researching and writing the book was an adventure. I often started with a hypothesis which I wondered if I could prove.  In Chapter Three, I wanted to show that prejudice towards Hippies affected national politics in the same manner that other forms of prejudice have; when I researched that, yes, I found an abundance of excellent evidence. I hypothesized that stereotypes of Hippies echoed stereotypes directed at traditionally recognized minorities. When I wrote that section, I produced 15 fine examples and felt that I had penned one of my best sections—interesting, convincing, sometimes amusing. Or, I believed that Hippie-America was largely responsible for the creation of the Personal Computer. “Can I prove it?” I told myself, “You know, people are going to find that claim sensational and probably untrue.” Again, I did prove it—and with ease. I found an abundance of solid, reliable evidence. And, I wanted to prove that the history of American drug laws is part of a larger history of persecution of American minorities. Again, I nailed it. Those successes were thrilling. 

Concerned that in some places readers might become bored, I used interesting examples; if I had five pieces of evidence for something, I trimmed it to the most interesting three. And I created a sensibly organized text that’s easy for the reader to use. I’ve bolded headings; so, should the reader want to move on, it’s easy. For example, most readers (obsessed with Hollywood as we are) will likely find the section on the Hippie identity of actress Jennifer Aniston interesting. However, if they don’t, they can skim over it and read about Gwenyth Paltrow or Johnny Depp or Susan Sarandon--or they can skip the section entirely and read about Hippiedom’s impact on the emerging Green burial industry or about the Burning Man festivals in Nevada. It’s all good; it’s all there. In any case, readers will be able to follow the argument. 

My overarching goal in Happily Hippie-American is to change readers’ paradigms and attitudes about Hippies, to demolish the cliché that “Hippies were just a thing of the 1960s,” and to enlighten on related matters. Using what I call, Ethnic-Hippies Theory (EHT), I’ve created the best, most important book ever written on the subject—cutting-edge thinking. It is my hope and belief that a decade down the road, the notion that Hippies are a living ethnicity will be the standard, accepted paradigm, that in the end, readers will say, “I accept EHT because it makes sense; going back to old ways of thinking would be like wearing an old pair of glasses.” Come, walk with me. Let’s talk about “hippies.”