Books in Brief: Steal This Book

Steal This Book, by Abbie Hoffman (Pirate Editions, distributed by Grove Press, 308 pp., $1.95). Arthur Frommer, watch out. Dear Abbie’s latest is a sort of Ripping-Off Amerika on Minus $5 a Day for citizens of Woodstock Nation, complete with diagrams on how to make Molotov cocktails, lessons in getting the right gun to do the job, and other useful tidbits for survival in “Pig Empire,” this “prison that is Amerika. It shows you where and exactly how to place the dynamite that will destroy the walls.” Anyone cursed with a touch of crypto-Ludditism, like me, should enjoy some of Abbie’s happier notions. My favorite, a sure-fire bet to end those postage-guaranteed return postcard thingies that clog up the postbox at home, is to paste the next one you get on a brick and drop it in the corner mailbox. Dr. Hoffman’s investigations into the Post Office Conspiracy taught him that the company is required by law to pay the postage. “You can also get rid of all your garbage this way,” he adds. But the light stuff in this sequel to Hoffman’s Revolution for the Hell of It is sandwiched between the ugliness for which Abbie is beloved by the Left: little lessons on how to kill people, kick cops in the groin—friendly, friendly. Abbie’s concern for The People is touching. For instance, in urging his brothers and sisters to rip-off retail stores, he forgets, or probably doesn’t give a damn, that shoplifting accounts for part of the continued rise in retail prices. Thus, while Abbie’s ideological siblings take for free, “the people” (like those little old welfare mothers he’s always fretting about) get charged more. Such a friend of humanity, oy. The book’s worth the reading by our side, but even if you steal it, that capitalist pig Hoffman still gets his cut, so how ’bout if Our People’s Underworld just Xeroxes a thousand copies from my copy and mails one to anybody who sends in two bucks? All profits could go to the FBI Surveillance Fund.

DB

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D. J. C. Brudnoy

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Steal This Book, by Abbie Hoffman (Pirate Editions, distributed by Grove Press, 308 pp., $1.95). Arthur Frommer, watch out. Dear Abbie’s latest is a sort of Ripping-Off Amerika on Minus $5 a Day for citizens of Woodstock Nation, complete with diagrams on how to make Molotov cocktails, lessons in getting the right gun to do the job, and other useful tidbits for survival in “Pig Empire,” this “prison that is Amerika. It shows you where and exactly how to place the dynamite that will destroy the walls.” Anyone cursed with a touch of crypto-Ludditism, like me, should enjoy some of Abbie’s happier notions. My favorite, a sure-fire bet to end those postage-guaranteed return postcard thingies that clog up the postbox at home, is to paste the next one you get on a brick and drop it in the corner mailbox. Dr. Hoffman’s investigations into the Post Office Conspiracy taught him that the company is required by law to pay the postage. “You can also get rid of all your garbage this way,” he adds. But the light stuff in this sequel to Hoffman’s Revolution for the Hell of It is sandwiched between the ugliness for which Abbie is beloved by the Left: little lessons on how to kill people, kick cops in the groin—friendly, friendly. Abbie’s concern for The People is touching. For instance, in urging his brothers and sisters to rip-off retail stores, he forgets, or probably doesn’t give a damn, that shoplifting accounts for part of the continued rise in retail prices. Thus, while Abbie’s ideological siblings take for free, “the people” (like those little old welfare mothers he’s always fretting about) get charged more. Such a friend of humanity, oy. The book’s worth the reading by our side, but even if you steal it, that capitalist pig Hoffman still gets his cut, so how ’bout if Our People’s Underworld just Xeroxes a thousand copies from my copy and mails one to anybody who sends in two bucks? All profits could go to the FBI Surveillance Fund.