Parts of a Whole Earth: An exploration of the origins of The Last Whole Earth Catalog

My dad discovered it like this: “I bought an old car and drove from New York to San Francisco and then down to San Diego and then back along Route 66,” he said. “It was 1972 and things were getting a bit nasty with the anti-war movement. It was two years after Woodstock so the prime hippy time in San Francisco had passed. Although there were still plenty there, it was more of a tourist attraction than the real thing. That’s really why it died a death – people just went to stare at the hippies and they all cleared off in buses and went out to live in the countryside somewhere.” The Whole Earth Catalog was made primarily with those migrating hippies in mind, a cross between an ancient book of spells and an aesthetically pleasing Argos or Sears catalogue, made to provide people in remote areas with mail-order goods they otherwise wouldn’t be able to access. “So many people lived out in the middle of nowhere, they grew up really on a culture of catalogs,” Dad told me. “People that lived in little farmsteads out in the country would send for stuff just like we do from Amazon now.” In addition to providing a service allowing you to order the right tools you required to, for example, help maintain your geodesic dome, it also fed the burgeoning spiritual attitudes of the time. Dotted among the adverts for goods are short stories, quips, philosophies and gentle guidelines to how to lead a rich life living off the land. As exciting as it was for a lot of people to migrate out to the sticks, the number of people who ended up staying out of the towns and cities for good started to dwindle. “The reason why that sort of lifestyle never really prospered is that people found it too hard to go back to living that simply,” Dad said. “If you’re brought up in that simple way and you didn’t know anything else then that would be fine, but if you throw off all the trappings of modern life and say ‘I’m going to go and grow my own veg and live off the land!’ I think you’d find it extremely difficult. A few people do but they still have to get out and see the doctor and whatever else. And they still need some money!” The entire series of The Whole Earth Catalogs have been discussed, exhibited, dissected and photographed extensively over the years. Something about its aesthetic, and its revolutionising of information sharing seems to have everlasting appeal to anyone with a curious, creative disposition. In this issue of Printed Pages we wanted to take the pieces of The Last Whole Earth Catalog that we think represent it best and celebrate them for their genius with the help of illustrator Jesse Fillingham. As for the original copy we managed to get our hands on, it’s going straight back to my parent’s cellar. Village Planning in the Primitive World Have you ever sat around hungover with your friends and plotted starting you own commune together? Well, before the days of urban sprawl those dreams were often put into practice by hippies who wanted to skedaddle out of cities and procreate out in the wild countryside where the skies were bluer, the grass greener and the restraints of modern life were few and far between. Can you imagine the feeling they must have had? Bundling items that were most probably purchased from a Whole Earth Catalog into tie-dye saris, scrambling barefoot into the back of a camper and hot-tailing it out of the city to a location chosen by throwing a pocket crystal onto an old map. You know that feeling of excitement and ownership you get when you arrive at a festival and you start setting up your tent before doing a “reccy”? Imagine that when you start setting up your tent in your new commune. The thing is, as dreamy as starting a commune in an unoccupied field sounds, it may not end up looking as much like a renaissance fair as you had hoped. Books like Village Planning in the Primitive World were sold via The Last Whole Earth Catalogue to teach people how to arrange their cluster of homes in formations taken from camps, villages and settlements throughout history. “This book has 78 pictures and eight detailed written accounts of village systems that have worked for bushmen, Cheyenne Indians, Trobriand Islanders, the Yoruba, Mbuti pygmies and others,” Stewart writes. It’s so pleasing to imagine drifting over 1970s America in a hot air balloon and peering down to see the sun casting shadows on to the modern, but ancient-looking settlements down below. Domebook Two On page 91 of _The Last Whole Earth Catalog there is a section entitled Dome Cookbook which has been written over with the words Out of Print. Bugger! Not to worry. For anyone who was still in the market for a geodesic dome back in 1967, the next page helpfully gives the reader information on Domebook Two, a publication of a similar nature. The editor’s review states: “This is an instruction manual for builders and a story book of some new communities in America. It is the beginning of an information net of of people making their own shelters.” And f