I keep thinking about the sixties. And when I’m not thinking about the sixties, I’m wondering why I think so much about the sixties. About the former, there seems no end of speculation, but about the latter I’ve come to a working hypothesis. A person’s youth appears to comprise about two decades. In the first, he’s busy learning to talk, to walk, to chew gum, and to tie his shoes. In the second, he’s come to understand that there are others in this world than himself, and he spends a great deal of time absorbing evidence of this fact, as well as at speculating where his place is in this newly discovered mess. Part of the absorption process involves what we call culture. I rather doubt that children of any culture would retain much if anything of that culture were they to be uprooted by the age of ten and transplanted elsewhere. But if transplanted sometime during that second decade—well, I think we’ll all agree that such an individual would never lose at least some part of that person-molding time in his life.