R.I.P. Dennis Hopper: A symbol of a generation

The New York Times said in a profile of Hopper last month:

DENNIS HOPPER — actor, filmmaker, photographer, art collector, world-class burnout, first-rate survivor — never blew it. Unlike the villains and freaks he has played over the decades — the psycho with the mommy complex in “Blue Velvet,” the mad bomber with the grudge in “Speed” — he has made it through the good, the bad and some spectacularly terrible times. He rode out the golden age of Hollywood by roaring into a new movie era with “Easy Rider.” He hung out with James Dean, played Elizabeth Taylor’s son, acted for Quentin Tarantino. He has been rich and infamous, lost and found, the next big thing, the last man standing.

Dennis Hopper, the ultimate misfit, has died of cancer at age 74. Is there anyone that stayed in the public eye longer that embodies the best spirit and the worst excesses of the second half of the 20th century more than Hopper? From James Dean to 'Easy Rider' to his reclusive, written-off days to the drug problems to the constant redemption and reinvention, he seemed to set the tempo for a generation of Americans he wasn't even a part of, the Baby Boomers.

Or maybe, since he was born in 1936, he is the perfect symbol of the Lost Generation of Americans, too young for service in WWII, too old to be a Boomer, the generation that looked to James Dean's 'Rebel Without a Cause' as a rallying cry for the youth of post-war America. Outside the showers of glory history bestows on "The Greatest Generation," and preceding the ultimately insufferable Boomers' sense of entitlement and ego (yes, I'm being general), the Lost Generation had to move the country along in between very opposite towers of attitude and self-righteousness. They fought the rigidity of post-war suburban groupthink and Cold War paranoia. They laid the template for '60s-era rebellion that invariably turned commercial and commodified. It's like they fell in between the cracks of American history's golden boys, but did just as much as either The Greatest Generation or The Boomers ever did, if not more, to advance our culture and make sense of an era -- beginning in 1945 and ending whenever you'd like -- America may never emulate.

Where is the Dennis Hopper of today? Who is it? Who embodies America in 2010?