“The outburst of cultural energy that took place in the 1960s was in part a product of the two decades that came before. It’s always difficult for young people to see their own time in perspective: when you’re in your teens, a decade earlier feels like ancient history and the present moment seems normal: what exists now is surely what has always existed.” Margaret Atwood compares the Canadian literary landscape of the 1960s to the Burgess Shale, a geological formation that c