f I were hurtling down a huge black funnel, the whole world squeezing in tightö (43).
During the 1960s, between the war in Vietnam, the threat of the Soviet Union, and civil unrest over a number of issues domestically, the U.S. seemed to be a society that was squeezing in on itself and its citizens. Because of the ideas and views in his peace-advocating, enormously popular music, John Lennon was such a threat to the pro-Vietnam Nixon Administration that Nixon fought to have him deported from the country. Unlike today, rock was perceived as being much more of a threat to the status quo as a revolutionary force in the 1960s and 1970s. As Wiener writes, ôàit was not so clear in the late sixties that rock was compatible with the status quo. Rock was the music of young people who opposed injustice and oppressionö (3). Contrast this view with the playing of LennonÆs Come Together at the Republican National Convention in 2000, when Dick Cheney made his way to the podium.
Unfortunately, as a young man about to be forced into service in Vietnam, Tim OÆBrien, and as a wildly popular and influential spokesman to millions due to his music success, John Lennon, were unaware of the challenges ahead of them. Both felt that peace and honor were preferable to war and propaganda. Both felt that they could make a difference by standing for and acting on the right things. Both would eventually learn that the utopian society they wished to help create and maintain was an illusion. By the end of his life, Lennon was finally realizing that he wanted good music and peace, internal not social peace, as the stuff of his life. OÆBrien attempted to find such internal peace through the writing of his stories. In ôThe Lives of the Dead,ö OÆBrien writes of himself as a young man, one he is trying to resuscitate in hope and innocence through the writing of his traumatic war experiences:
IÆm young and happy. IÆll never die. IÆm skimm...