Next up for Thomas Hine: “The Great Funk” that was the 1970s

I’m admirer of Thomas Hine — Populuxe is a wonderful book, and so is The Total Package, and I’m a big fan of his The Rise and Fall of The American Teenager — so I was pleased to see this news, that he has a book coming out about the 70s. That’s a great subject, and a really great subject for Hine.

Here’s a bit from an interview in which he talks about the new book due out in November, The Great Funk (and in which he mentions in passing that Populuxe was out of print for a while; I find that astounding.)

The time when the assumptions of the Populuxe years were truly undone, once and for all, was the decade of the 1970s. And I realized that even though this was a period that was antithetical to the fifties in so many ways—a time of scarcity rather than abundance, fragmentation rather than national unity, personal exploration rather than social progress, corruption rather than trust, defeat rather than victory—it visually interesting and even positive in all sorts of unexpected ways….

[The Great Funk] reflects its time in that it is less about technology and more about consciousness. It deals a lot with clothes and the body, and thus is PG or even R rated, rather than G. The title is a play, of course, on the Great Depression, which is one meaning of funk. But funk is also about texture, and rhythm, and a sensuality, which is also an important part of the picture. And it contains some incredible pictures of interiors. I think that those who like Populuxe will be intrigued.

Sounds good to me. I actually think there’s much about understanding the 1970s that can help us understand the present era. Again: great subject for Hine.