Growing Up at Thirty-Seven

by Jerry Rubin

Book by Jerry Rubin

Genres: Memoir

Paperback

First published January 1, 1976

About the author

Jewish-American radical social activist during the 1960s and 1970 and founding member of the the Youth International Party.

Jerry^Rubin

Reviews

[Alan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jerry Rubin was the older brother I always wished I had. When I was a first-year college student, I read Do It! and then I did it, which essentially meant I took my life into my own hands, trusting my thoughts and judgments and taking responsibility for my actions. One of the first things I "did" was to join the Vietnam War protest movement. I did this in the spirit which Rubin describes so well in this book: "I do not feel that i was immature or adolescent when I was active in the 1960's protesting the Vietnam War. We were childlike in our enthusiasm and idealism, and I never want to lose that sense of awe and excitement."

In Growing Up at 37, Rubin describes growing up in Cincinnati in the early 1960’s and, like me, he had trouble understanding his parents. He went to Walnut Hills HS and became the school paper sports writer then wrote a column for the Cincinnati Enquirer. His mom died of cancer at 48 and his dad died of a heart attack a few years later. Rubin arrived in California just in time the Berkeley Free Speech Movement, where he met all the radicals of that place and time.

After the Chicago 7 trial and the end of the era of hippies and Yippies, Rubin got in touch with his body, taking up jogging and improving his diet. He tried every form of therapy popular in the 1970’s – Rolfing, est, yoga, and the rest -- and he describes them in great detail, concluding that "... in the consciousness movement, each trip taught me to enjoy what I am doing while I am doing it."

Rubin's book ends with a very optimistic prediction about the future – too bad it didn’t come true. He lived as a multi-millionaire until 1994 and died when he was hit by a car as he was jaywalking across Wilshire Boulevard in Hollywood.

I loved reading this book, which helped to rekindle in me some flames of hope, humor, self-reflection, and optimism that have flickered so much since Trump was elected 16 months ago.

[Edward · Rating 2 out of 5]

Rubin went from Yippie (with Abbie Hoffman) to Yuppie. The ultimate sell-out. I'm interested in sell-outs, but this isn't all that interesting. There's a documentary that shows him in the 80's jogging with a poodle, talking about business networking parties where people are getting free haircuts, and getting a big boner about starting this restaurant. Pretty gross...

[Domenico Francesco · Rating 3 out of 5]

L'autobiografia di uno dei fondatori e leader delllo Youth International Party, la frangia politica del movimento hippie - chiamati yippies per distinguerli più specificatamente dagli hippie tradizionali - nonché uno dei Chicago 7 che vennero accusati di sovversione per le loro attività pacifiste e contro la guerra del Vietnam.

Rubin evita di raccontare il passato in maniera elogiativa, ma anzi, il libro inizia raccontando delle delusione dei primi anni '70 e della scomparsa delle controculture americane dalla scena e nel corso del libro Rubin evidenzia quelli che secondo lui sono stati i problemi del movimento yippie e degli impulsi controculturali del paese. Per il resto il libro racconta delle difficoltà di Rubin avute sin dalla prima giovinezza, delle sue esperienze che lo hanno plasmato come uno dei leader radicali dei movimenti giovanili del paese, del suo attivismo e di come le sue idee siano cambiate nel corso del tempo, accorgendosi dei suoi errori e dei luoghi comuni borghesi insiti nel suo pensiero. Nel libro vengono quindi presentate le difficoltà di Rubin individualmente dopo gli anni '60, lo scemare della fama, del successo e del ruolo pubblico, del suo rapporti con una mentalità che cambiava, dell'aiuto offerto da John Lennon e del suo cambio di prospettive sul mondo. Il libro però si sofferma un po' troppo sulle terapie che Rubin ha seguito successivamente che lo hanno aiutato a guarire dalla depressione, dalla terapia della Gestalt a quella reichiana passando per lo yoga e diverse altre ancora sconfiggendo i fantasmi del passato e acquisire una nuova percezione del mondo. Su ciò bisogna riconoscerne il pregio, non sempre capita di trovare autobiografie di personaggi della controcultura dell'epoca che si soffermino anche sull'autocritica oltre che sui loro successi.

Ed è proprio nel finale che il libro mostra il meglio, quando Rubin si prefigura la nascita di un nuovo movimento controculturale che superi i difetti di quello precedente, più spirituale e concienzioso, più inclusivo e partecipante dei problemi di tutte le minoranze e le problematiche globali che sappia guardare al di là del proprio orticello americano e divenire globale (in questa parte vi sono anche delle osservazioni interessanti sul Cile che Rubin ebbe occasione di visitare poco prima del colpo di stato nel paese appoggiato proprio dagli USA).

Purtroppo nonostante questa bellissima chiusa ciò non accadde come prefigurato: Rubin stesso pochi anni dopo abbandonò definitivamente il mondo della controcultura e della politica e divenne uno squalo dell'alta finanza (continuando poi a giustificare che ciò fosse comunque controculturale e rivoluzionario sulla base che il termine yuppie venisse da yippie e fossero quindi intrinsecamente la stessa cosa). Ovviamente con questa svolta si alienò ancor di più di quanto già non fosse, gli ambienti radicali americani venendo (comprensibilmente) accusato di ipocrisia (per certi versi però si può dire che Rubin ci vede lungo su come alcuni fattori della controcultura si ripresentarono nel cosiddetto rinascimento psichedelico della Silicon Valley, quello sì).
Jerry Rubin morì nel novembre del 1994 investito da una macchina, in quello stesso periodo con lungimiranza aveva acquistato della azioni da una società chimata Apple che nel girò di pochi anni gli avrebbero fruttato miliardi.

[Pete · Rating 1 out of 5]

A fine example of what happened to the 60's, as important a marker as Helter Skelter. This book made me appreciate Rubin more as a human being, but his quest for personal satisfaction, such a radical change from his previous role as YIPPIE, is almost laughable in its umness.

[Jeff B. · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an interesting book. It came out in 1976 - after his political activism and before his Wall Street stage. During this time he was really into consciousness expansion, the growth movement, and being a health nut. It's kind of a hodgepodge of an explanation of why he left the Yippie movement, a memoir of his life, and his thoughts on all these wild growth movement programs he tried. Towards the end, there's even an open letter to Abbie Hoffman, who was on the run after a drug bust at the time. I had recently read Jerry's other book, Do It!: Scenarios of the Revolution. I gave that book three and a half stars (rounded to four). I thought this book was more engaging, but Do It!: Scenarios of the Revolution was more cohesive. I also thought this book dragged a bit towards the end. Here are my thoughts:

1. There's a lot to criticize Jerry Rubin for, but I always got the impression, at least reading this, that his heart was in the right place. He's so damn earnest. I was especially moved by his reasons for leaving the political movements behind. He had legitimate issues with the movement and the movement seemed to want him gone, too. I also really sympathize with his plight. He had all the pitfalls of fame, but not the money that often accompanies it. His identity as a revolutionary was burned into the consciousness of America, which made it hard to reinvent himself - or, as he would say, "reincarnate himself".

2. The memoir-part was very interesting. He tells us all about his childhood and how he became political and how his life unfolded. There's a lot about his parents that comes full circle when he discusses some his consciousness-expanding therapies. I think it's a pretty good autobiography of his life up to that point.

3. A big chunk of this book is about his time with all these wild "personal growth" programs. I was five years old when this was written and I wasn't familiar with many of these programs from the '70s. They were quite expensive and intense, and there would be whole chapters on many of these programs. Jerry was able to look at these programs fairly objectively, I thought. Like he could see how many of these programs were top-down, authoritarian organizations and many of the leaders were charlatans. He wasn't offended or outraged, and would sometimes even respect their con. He was able to often show interesting similarities between the "personal growth movement" and the '60s anti-war movement. Maybe they are two sides of the same coin.

4. The open letter to Abbie Hoffman was interesting. I always thought of them as inseparable blood brothers or something, but reading this gave me the impression that their relationship was a bit different. Kind of like a band that's been around for a while, and you assume they spend every minute together, but in reality they only see each other for band events. I found it touching, and I thought about the debates they had with each other in the '80s. I love them both.

Anyway, I like Jerry Rubin more now than before I read this, but it's such a hodgepodge. It's incomplete as an autobiography as he lived 18 more years and did some interesting things. If you care about a bunch of intense therapies from the '70s, there's a lot here. I guess I liked the parts where he talked about his transition from "anti-war" to "personal growth" (and how he reconciles the two movements) the best. My next Jerry Rubin book I read will be a biography called Did It! From Yippie To Yuppie: Jerry Rubin, An American Revolutionary.

[Sandra · Rating 2 out of 5]

Renowned political activist, Jerry Rubin, at times sums up a particular aspect of the movements of the political 1960s or the spiritual 1970s succinctly, but then bogs down in wordiness and over explanation, occasional self-obsessiveness. He starts out well enough with such insights as: “we were guilty of many of the things we were fighting against in America.” He is at his best as the brutally honest self-observer when he describes his political persona of the 1960s, the post-Yippie urge to reform himself, and the experiences of personal growth through such programs as yoga, bioenergetics, Fischer-Hoffman Psychic Therapy, Erhard Seminars Training or est, and Arica training. However, his ideas of relating the personal to the political beyond the mid-1970s are disjointed and tumble into empty rhetoric about an expanding human consciousness, a kind of wishful thinking, not giving credence to the pitfalls of human nature or to the forces of tradition or what actually is manifesting. Nevertheless, his memoir documents the initiative he as a major counterculture leader took to awaken the American social conscience during the Vietnam years and to sow seeds for developing a public consciousness that begins with individual responsibility, halting though the progress be.

[David Geschke · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book has been on my shelf for years. I recently watched a movie about the Chicago 7 trial and decided to pull it out and read it. I was always more of an Abbie Hoffman fan myself. He seemed more “real” to me than Rubin did back then. This book is ok, not sure it would interest anyone who doesn’t know who Jerry Rubin is at all. And for those who do know the name, it was written in 1976 - long after the Yippies and Chicago 7 trial had ended. And before he became a stockbroker and hit it big with an early investment in Apple stock (I got that from his Wikipedia Page). This book chronicles his search inward using many different styles within the consciousness movement. I got through the whole thing, so three stars for that - but... there were several times I considered giving up and reading something else. So many books, so little time. Not sure this one is or was worth the time taken to read it. Mediocre at best :)

[Paul Wilner · Rating 1 out of 5]

Hate to say it, but Jerry was a dick, before and after he sold out.