Don't Follow Me, I'm Lost
A Memoir of Hampshire College at the Twilight of the '80s
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4.5 • 2 Ratings
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- $15.99
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
Richard Rushfield takes us on an unforgettable and hilarious trip through higher alternative education in the eighties.
Don't Follow Me, I'm Lost is a strange and salacious memoir about life at the ultimate New England hippie college at the height of Reaganomics. Opening its doors in 1970, Hampshire College was an experiment in progressive education that went hilariously awry. Self- proclaimed nerd Richard Rushfield enrolled with the freshman class of 1986, hoping to shed his wholesome California upbringing in this liberal hideout, where overachievement and preppy clothes were banned.
By turns hilarious, ironic, and steeped in history, Don't Follow Me, I'm Lost takes readers to a campus populated by Deadheads, club kids, poets, and insomniac filmmakers, at a time when America saw the rise of punk and grunge alongside neoconservatism, earnest calls for political correctness, and Take Back the Night vigils. Imagine Lord of the Flies set on a college campus and you have Richard Rushfield's alma mater experience.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Following his student career at America's last great hippie school, Hampshire College, in the waning days of the 1980s, author Rushfield (On Spec), west coast editor of online media gossip magazine Gawker (gawker.com), wanders through a land of optional majors and obligatory drug use that's only fitfully engaging. None of Rushfield's characters come off as particularly likeable: not the humorless administrators, the painfully politically-correct students, or the rebellious, pot-addled group of friends ("the Supreme Dicks") with whom Rushfield runs. Even Rushfield himself annoys, making decisions, like the one to skip most classes his first semester, without much explanation or self-examination. Rushfield makes the autobiographer's mistake of being too easy on himself and too rushed with his narrative, leaving readers with questions like why, exactly, he was so ostracized from Hampshire society. Though Rushfield hits some perfect notes in the details of college life-stepping into his first dorm, "the soon to be familiar smell of moss, stale beer, and laundry detergent introduced itself"-those without a connection to Hampshire probably won't find this memoir of much interest.
