in History, Literature | May 18th, 2026 Leave a Comment

With­out want­i­ng to make too broad a gen­er­al­iza­tion, it’s safe to say that Sat­ur­day Evening Post read­ers prob­a­bly did­n’t under­stand much about what was going on in San Fran­cis­co dur­ing the Sum­mer of Love. Or they did­n’t, at least, until the mag­a­zine ran “Slouch­ing Towards Beth­le­hem,” Joan Did­ion’s simul­ta­ne­ous report from and obit­u­ary for the drug-fueled seek­er scene that had formed around Haight-Ash­bury. Quite pos­si­bly her sin­gle most wide­ly known piece of writ­ing, the piece relates her encoun­ters both direct and indi­rect with par­tic­i­pants in the coun­ter­cul­ture both obscure and promi­nent.

That lat­ter group includes no less a San Fran­cis­co hip­pie insti­tu­tion than the Grate­ful Dead, Did­ion’s inter­view with whom did­n’t make it into the final piece. But over near­ly six decades since then, its type­script has remained among her papers, and it was recent­ly dis­cov­ered in Did­ion and John Gre­go­ry Dun­ne’s lit­er­ary archive at the New York Pub­lic Library by Did­ion biog­ra­ph­er Tim­o­thy Denevi. Just days ago, music jour­nal­ist Jeff Weiss post­ed the 1967 text online, describ­ing it “as a land­mark ear­ly inter­view with the band direct­ly after the release of their self-titled debut album, but before nation­al star­dom swept them on the Gold­en Road to unlim­it­ed devo­tion and drug con­sump­tion.”