Introduction
Occasionally a book is published that has an enormous impact on both scholarly and popular thought throughout this country and eventually the entire world. One such book was published by Random House in 1970. The title is The Greening of America and the author is Charles A. Reich, who teaches law at Yale University Law School. This book caused immediate and widespread excitement, and discussions of it are still going on. The excitement is understandable, for in his highly readable and eminently reasonable work Professor Reich predicts that there is a new revolution coming in America in the very near future.
Reich does not mean an old-fashioned revolution in which violence and bloodshed are the major elements, however. As Justice William O. Douglas has said, "This is a book about Revolution-not in the Marxist sense, but Revolution against many of the values which Technology has thrust upon us. The question is, can we develop a new Consciousness that places the Individual and Humanistic values above the machine?" And in Reich's own words, "This is the revolution of the new generation. Their protest and rebellion, their culture, clothes, music, drugs, ways of thought, and liberal life-style are not a passing fad or a form of dissent and refusal, nor are they in any sense irrational. The whole emerging pattern, from ideals to campus demonstrations to beads and bell bottoms to the Woodstock Festival, makes sense and is part of a consistent philosophy. It is both necessary and inevitable, and in time it will include not only youth, but all people in America."
As for the development of a new Consciousness, which Justice Douglas mentions, Reich believes that it is already here. He calls it Consciousness III and states flatly that it is the new generation. (Consciousness I is defined as the traditional outlook of the American farmer, small businessman and worker trying to get ahead, while Consciousness II represents the values of an organized society.) He further contends that the greatest question we face today is how we can live in and with a technological society and still preserve our humanity. The entire book is an argument with many examples designed to prove that we can. Today's young people are doing it, according to this argument, and the inevitable acceptance of their values by the rest of us will cause the quiet but dramatic revolution he predicts.
The use of drugs, while their benefits and dangers are still debatable, is obviously one of the important values of Professor Reich's Consciousness III. He devotes considerable space to it, quoting a poem named "Stoned" from R. Crumb's Head Comix and going on to say: "'Stoned' refers to the drug experience, but it also expresses an attitude toward life, a way of life, that has found the immense power inherent in changing one's own life, the power that comes from laughter, looseness, and the refusal to take seriously that which is rigid and nonhuman -the power to 'keep on truckin'.' To fight the machine is to experience powerlessness. To change one's life is to recapture the truth that only individuals and individual lives are real."
In the perspective of a larger revolution, the sexual revolution we have heard so much about becomes more real and more meaningful. If uninhibited individuals with youthful ideas are going to make up their own minds about morals and relationships, major changes will certainly follow. And if those changes help us retain our basic humanity, it is difficult to see any serious danger in them, as shocking and tradition-shattering they may be to some people.
Trap for a Tease is the story of a revolution that takes place within the confines of one American family. It is the story of Barbara Bennett, a young girl who studies and measures her own values, which are definitely those of the new generation instead of those of her elders. It is also the story of the struggle between her parents' ideas and her own, a struggle in which many consciences are dissected and examined. Barbara is not selfish, and wants her entire family to be happy, but her battle to help others meets with considerable resistance. Nor can all of her actions be praised, even when her motives are unquestionably meritorious. Her eventual victory may be predictable, but the precise details of it are not.
Drugs, for instance, play an important role in Barbara's struggle, and her use of them may be deemed questionable. We do not, as publishers or individuals, advocate the use of drugs, for we feel that too little is known about the results of such use and that further scientific study is needed. This is a true-to-life story, however, and realism demands the presence of the aphrodisiacs Barbara obtains and utilizes. If the reader wishes, the book can be taken as a warning against drug abuse-but it can just as easily be considered merely an entertaining story.
Certainly Barbara is a very genuine person, and as such she undergoes change and development throughout the course of the events depicted here. She emerges at the end as a better, more fully rounded individual who has acquired a good deal more wisdom because of her adventures. But she remains very typical of the new generation, the kind of human being who is playing such an important role in the revolution Professor Reich has described.
Trap for a Tease does not invite comparison to The Greening of America in any other way. It is fiction, not fact. It is a novel which has the power to charm readers as well as to shock them. But it portrays one important facet of the contemporary revolution which all of us must live through. As such, we believe it conveys a vital message for all Americans, young and old alike.
The Publishers