The annual Books in Bloom Literary Festival will include for the first time an Independently Published Authors section. Among those joining national bestselling authors Jeffrey Deaver, Chris Bohjalian and Wiley Clark on May 19 are local writers Wendy Reese Hartmann, Zeek Taylor and Jared M. Phillips.
Phillips’s book Hipbillies: Deep Revolution in the Arkansas Ozarks will certainly be of interest to those who were around in the 1960s and ‘70s when Eureka Springs was the place where Birkenstock met livestock. Some folks interviewed for the book, including Vernon Tucker and Bill Brown, are still living in or around Eureka Springs.
Phillips’s book weaves oral histories and research together to tell how the Back to the Lander’s (BTL) movement of “country beatniks” engaged with locals and eventually became a part of the Ozark region’s coming to terms with the modern world.
As Phillips explains it, “First off, as a social movement or revolutionary movement, the BTL world of the 1960s and 1970s was attempting – and here I’m painting with a broad brush – to reform social norms and priorities. And they didn’t always win… but they did win a lot of battles. The growth of farmers’ markets, organic agriculture, a broadening of social justice norms, and more, all speak in part to the success of the BTL world.
“Many of the ideals of the counterculture of the 1960s and ‘70s were commercialized to the degree that it’s normal for people from all socio-political stripes to buy organic foods, talk about legalizing marijuana, or even put solar panels up.”
Phillips, who holds a doctorate in American History, teaches International Studies as well as seminars on human rights, indigenous rights, and food security at the University of Arkansas, and lives and works on a small farm outside Prairie Grove. He became interested in the BTL movement because he had “grown up hearing stories about all these naked hippies that showed up and then got stoned and were afraid of snakes.”
“I had heard how they were terrible people,” Phillips told the Independent, “but that didn’t match what I knew. I’m also interested in small-scale development in rural places and this is an interesting story about that.”
If he had to choose, Phillips would pick two messages from his work. “First, people need to take the back to the landers seriously from an academic and cultural perspective. They’ve been turned into circus exhibits by a lot of pundits and academics for the last forty years, and I think that means we’ve missed a lot of lessons. Second, human scaled community matters – small scale, agrarian communities, matter more than just farmers’ markets and natural clothing. What I mean is that here we’ve got an example in how a group of people created an alternative community structure more akin to late 19th and early 20th century rural life than what we see today, and while it wasn’t perfect, it worked within a human scale. Crucial, I think, if we’re to continue on as a species.”
Come find out why on May 19 at the Crescent Hotel. Phillips will speak on “Digging Up a Revolution” at 2:30 in the Author’s Tent. For a complete schedule of all 16 speakers, see www.booksinbloom.org.