Generation What?
Dispatches from the Quarter-Life Crisis
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- $16.99
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
Seemingly a bit ludicrous and even comical, the quarter-life crisis is actually a very real phenomenon afflicting more rudderless twenty-somethings with each passing year. In Generation What?, young up-and-coming writers recount their individual quarrels between hoping to exist on the fringes of childhood and wanting to participate in the arena of adult responsibility.
Some heartbreaking, some humorous, the essayists' disparate topics—passionless marriage, fallible parents, Peace Corps survival, cutting the college-life cord, and the like—run the gamut of disillusionment, denial, and yes, even deliverance.
The Lost Generation nursed the devastating wounds of World War I. The Greatest Generation conquered both the Great Depression and totalitarianism. The Beat Generation sped along the counterculture pathways. The Baby Boomers embraced protests and free love, while Generation X birthed mass technology and postmodern malaise. And Generation Y—the young people of the millennium who have more resources, technology, and education than any before—has . . . what?
Essayists include editors from Broken Pencil and JANE magazine and contributors to The New York Times, The Village Voice, BUST, Adbusters, and PLENTY, as well as young authors with books forthcoming from Harper Perennial and Simon & Schuster.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Editor Vanrenen, a freelance writer in Denver, makes a decent if familiar case for the ennui of the 20-something set, who have been "sold the American dream," only to face an "overwhelming" number of questions, and even more options. Unfortunately, the essays she's assembled to parse that ennui are decidedly bottom-heavy on the hit-to-miss ratio. Hits come from Joshua Bernstein, recalling in straightforward prose his unsatisfying stint at a "bottom-rung" porn publishing company; and Rebecca Landwehr, who details a break-up with her high school sweetheart after a ten-year relationship. The misses all have in common a half-baked commitment to the assignment and a sense that we've read, seen or heard this all before. Kate Torgovnick's "How I Became a Bed-Maker," about her growing maturity and necessity for order, and Justin Maki's "Salvation in Wordplay," dealing with his post-collegiate experiences in Japan, prove uninteresting and occasionally difficult to digest; however, they're just two among numerous disappointments. To be sure, 20-somethings, like everyone else, can and do go through legitimate crises of faith and identity; those looking for levelheaded answers-or even a few well-posed queries-will do better looking elsewhere.
