Revolution For the Hell Of It!

Hoffman’s firsthand accounts of his legendary adventures, from the activism that led up to the founding of the Youth International Party—the Yippies!—to the 1968 Democratic National Convention protests (“a perfect mess”), levitating the Pentagon, and dropping handfuls of dollar bills onto the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. This new edition also contains a facsimile edition of his rare, first book, Fuck The System, a foreword by Harvey Wasserman, and an introduction by Reverend Billy. New paperback, released, 2005.

“Hoffman was a Groucho Marxist — wasn’t that one of his own lines? His most famous spectacle, during the conspiracy trial for inciting riots at the 1968 Democratic National Convention, was his most spectacular, before he went underground in 1974 after being arrested for cocaine dealing. Hoffman wreaked havoc on the rules of procedure. He told the court that Hoffman was his ”slave name”; Shapoznikoff (the family name of his grandparents) was his ”real name.” He needled the judge, unfortunately named (Julius) Hoffman, mercilessly, sometimes in Yiddish to boot.

Running amok was always Hoffman’s forte, and in doing so he owed less to the high theories of Antonin Artaud than to a low tradition of Jewish dadaism whose brilliant warriors — not just the Marx Brothers and Lenny Bruce but also Sid Caesar and Mel Brooks — were determined to overturn middle-class rationality. Hoffman remained that cocky, charming, wisecracking bad boy in the back row in homeroom. He never quite stopped manipulating his rowdy persona, which gave him a certain dangerous-sexy cachet during his student days at Brandeis College, where he paraded about campus in a disreputable leather jacket whose rips hinted at knife fights past. None of this was artless. Early on, Hoffman was a restless conjurer of images, mainly of himself.” — Jonathan Rieder, New York Times

$ 16.95