Conclusion

The bulk of this book is concerned with the mark literary figures left on the Grateful Dead’s lyrics and articulations of the band members’ work as performing artists. The conclusion turns, instead, to the impact the Grateful Dead have had on literature across three categories: texts that treat the band on its own terms, texts that handle the band as an emblem of twentieth-century countercultural attitudes, and texts that are shaped by the intertextual impact of the band’s lyrics and performances. While these categories are by no means entirely closed to one another, they do recognize the distinct areas in which the band’s work has left its mark on the literary. Douglas Coupland’s Polaroids from the Dead is given special attention. Other figures discussed include journalists Hunter S. Thompson, Tom Wolfe, and Joan Didion, poets such as James Merrill and Richard Brautigan, and novelists like Philip K. Dick and David Foster Wallace.