Does anyone else remember that made-for-tv movie The Day After about nuclear holocaust?
I do. And it scared the shit out of me. I’m not sure if the fear of nuclear war was there in my head before I saw it but once I did it was an ever-present angst.
Well, discovered a book which is a kind of memoir about growing up with that particular angst. It’s called The Day After The Day After: My Atomic Angst.
I’m guessing I’ll be able to identify. Just a little bit…
Courtesy JenX67, here are a couple of really great advice/informational article for teachers re: GenX parents.
The first one is by a GenX mom who fully admits to stealth-parenting, which is so much cooler a label (I mean if you have to have one) than helicopter parenting, which was/is a Boomer thing.
Here’s a taste (i.e. quote from the article):
“They’ll go over your head if they don’t get the results they want from you,” says Anita Thomas, who taught science in a public school in Beaufort, South Carolina. That makes sense, says Lisa Chamberlain, author of Slackonomics: Generation X in the Age of Creative Destruction. “Anything that smacks of bureaucratic red tape or protocol is an irritant,” she explains. “We had to fend for ourselves, which is great if you’re an entrepreneur, but not when you’re a parent.”
The second is by generational guru Neil Howe:
Many Gen-X parents acquire a surprising degree of (self-taught) expertise about teaching methods and will bring stacks of Web printouts into meetings with teachers. A quip often used by former Education Secretary Margaret Spellings (herself a late-wave Boomer, born in 1957) speaks to many Gen-X parents: “In God we trust. All others bring data.”
This local, pragmatic, bottom-line perspective certainly contrasts with the more global, idealistic and aspirational perspective of Boomers. It has driven the rapid growth of parent-teacher organizations that opt out of any affiliation to the National Parent Teacher Association. According to many younger parents, the PTA is simply too large, too inflexible, too politically correct and too deferential to the educational establishment.
Sounds like a band or something, doesn’t it? Okay. Maybe not. Doesn’t matter. That’s not what I was going f or. So nah.
I’m using frogs as a cheeky endearment for the French not a pejorative. That’s my story and I’m sticking too it.
Anyhoo….
I’m not sure if the French buy into the whole Generation X thing (my understanding is that it’s got it’s Kool Aide drinkers across the channel in England) but if they do then Michel Houellebecq is one of their GenX authors. Born in 1958 he doesn’t fall into the age-range for Generation X, but the themes of his book definitely apply.
Just finished reading his novel, Platform.
And I fucking loved it. And not just because of the cover either, although I am rather fond of it – hubba hubba. I’m reading the hardcover edition and the cover is nothing like the paperback. But we’re not judging a book by it’s cover here. Or are we…..?
Briefly, the story is about a 40 year-old disaffected, cynical French guy whose father has just died. The mother doesn’t really figure in; I can’t even recall in what context the mother is even mentioned. Michel Renault, the main character and narrator, uses some of the money he inherits from his father to go on a vacation, a sex tourism deal — he eagerly and without shame frequents prostitutes. He does meat a girl, Valerie, but nothing happens until they meet up again back in France. Then they carry on a very passionate, lusty affair. In addition to writing about the taboo of sex tourism, Houllebecq’s narrator is none to kind to Arabs/Muslims, toward which his attitude is provacative, derogatory, even caustic and bigotted. My understanding is that MH has been hauled into court for some of the shit he’s written. One can understand why, but that does not take away from the ferocity of the prose and imagination (I scammed that phrasing from a blurb on the back of the book; but it’s true so it’s cool). He sort of reminds me of Brett Easton Ellis, but MH is a much better stylist.
No doubt this novel will not suit the typical American reader. They’re not going to like what they read, especially the derisive attitude toward Western culture, even particularly American at times, though mostly I think the narrator is referring to French culture, which is still Western.
In the end, MH’s fiction version of himself (what othe conclusion can one draw?), having dared to open himself up enough to receive pleasure from a woman lover moves from simply being apathetic to being incredibly bitter. And in the end, like in Douglas Coupland’s, Generation X, the main character ditches his Western digs for some place more exoctic but not with any sense of hope or new beginning but simply to live out his days, and to be forgotten, forgotten quickly.
Psst. Did I mention that it has some of the best sex scenes I’ve read — sexy, erotic, filthy and lusty all at once!
Strange aside: I tried to read this novel some years ago, after reading the author’s previous novel, The Elementary Particles, but for whatever reason could not…penetrate it, retain much of anything about it. That was before I got on my meds and therapy. Now, I realize just how foggy my head was, and that was why this novel would not click for me. But now, well, it’s crystal clear. I picked it up again and had to plow right through it. Now I’m going back to TEP because I can’t recall what that book was about either, only that on some vague level I liked it.
This time a younger one.
Brittany Murphy at the age of 32. That’s my wife’s age. Yikes!
Of course, Brits got her start in the movie Clueless, directed by Amy Heckerling the creator of one of the all time great GenX flicks, Fast Time at Ridgemont High, which launched the career of Sean Penn and laid bare a side of Phoebe Cates for which I an countless other GenX guys will be forever grateful.
She was also in 8 Mile with Eminem, which is about my old stomping grounds. In fact, I grew up less than a mile from the trailer park where they shot some of the scenes for 8 Mile. I used to ride my BMX bike through that trailer park to get to the one next to it becase my buddy Rick lived there.
Repots are saying that Murphy died of cardiac arrest, which of course sounds like perhaps an eating disorder (she’d gotten really thin) and/or drugs. Wow! Shocker.
I swear I’m trying to think of something else to say but I’m drawing a blank. I didn’t dislike Brits but wasn’t a huge fan either. I was, however, a fan of some of the movies she was in — Clueless, 8 Mile, Sin City.
RIP Brits.
NEXT!
When it gets cold like this, especially if it’s accompanied by snow, I’m reminded of when I lived in the dorms at school. Sitting with my feet up on the radiator, reading. While through my window I had a view of the dorm complex courtyard coated with a layer of snow that twinkled in the bright, even harsh at times, sunlight. I read a lot. The book I read more than any other was Jay McInerney’s novel, Bright Lights, Big City. (Less than Zero by Brett Easton Ellis was a close second) And today I’m compelled to read it again, as I have been doing almost every years since I first discovered, not when it was first published in 1984 but in 1988 after seeing the movie, staring Michael J. Fox, Kiefer Sutherland and Phebe Cates.
I know that BLBC, like it’s author, has something of checkered past, and that even McInerney himself refers to it at times as a kind of albatross around his neck. The books was and still is sometimes mocked. Sometimes I wonder when a Best of Bad McInerney contest is going to be created, if it doesn’t exist already. The second person narrative technique employed is often dismissed as nothing more than a clever device. Perhaps. But no book before it nor since has continued to resonate with me, has regulaly lured me back to read it again, has made me want to write. For me, it was my persmisson book – it gave me permission to write about what I really wanted to write about because I didn’t know you could write about such things; I wasn’t very well read at the time, so sue me. Before I’d read BLBC it was J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye, of course, that held that distinction but it was quickly replaced.
I’m trying to resist the impulse to set aside what I’m reading now to read BLBC because I’m perpetually backed up on my reading and never seem able to make a dent in the stack of books that I want to read, it just keeps growing, but forces seems to be conspiring against me.
This morning the movie was on cable. Of course, it is not a very good movie but even so I’ve watched it many times. Less Than Zero is a better movie. But a remake of BLBC: the movie is in the works, due to be released in 2010. I’m curious to see what comes of it this time around. I’ve often wondered what it would been like if Woody Allen had directed it or perhaps Ed Burns. My person preference would be for Stephen Sodeberg to do it. But I think the guy who produced and directed Gossip Girls for TV is doing it.
No doubt, in the end I’ll succumb to t his impulse to read BLBC yet again.And maybe this year of all years I shouldn’t even attempt to resist since 2009 marked the 25the aniversery of it’s publication. And as such maybe this year more than most it deserves a re-read.
I wonder if McInerney, because he seems to want to be remembered for his more sophisticated novels, is balking at a 25th aniversary edtion of BLBC. Or maybe they’re simply waiting until the movies comes out, releasing them together.
No. That’s not a new Judd Aptow movie although….
It is my new featured blog, which came to me in a dream. No. Not really. Unless, of course, you consider JenX67′s blog a dream. And you know what, I kind of do…<sigh>
Anyhoo…. JenX67 has a post about GenX men and how, because of the economy, GenX men are heading back to school — college/university not beautician, although…. (NOTE: post also brings up how GenX men have gotten the shaft [my word not hers] in the workplace)
That’s what I’m doing come winter semester. And I, as you know, am a GenXer. If you don’t then you’re NOT PAYING ATTENTION! Wake up dagnabit!
I’m taking an Environmental Science course. Thought I’d see what all the hubbub/ballyhoo/tom foolery is about. Who knows where it might lead. And, like the rest of Generation X, I aint getting any younger; don’t want to be back in school at 50-plus. Plus I’d like to be ahead of the curve or at least on the first wave of this new job market.
Actually, I had thought I might return to school once I was in my dotage but it would be for leisure not out of necessity. Silly GenXer, leisure learing is for Boomers!
Anyway, maybe I’ll blog about returning to school at age 42 (my age when class begins). It could kind of like that new TV show, Community, since I’ll be taking my class at a community college, the one I started at when I graduated high school and after I dropped out of two universities — sorry about that Mom and Dad. I’ll be the funny/snarky/cynical GenXer and I can poke fun at the graying Boomer (portrayed in the TV show by Chevy Case). I’ll call the due Pierce — he won’t know where I’m coming from.
Malcolm Gladwell (b. 1963) and Steven Levitt (b. 1967 [same year as me, which of course makes me feel like a loser, because what have I done, right?]) both have new books out.
Both are GenXer and both are innovative thinkers. Indicative of the GenX mindset they think quite differently than most others in their respective fields, which is why they are so successful.
Gladwell’s book , What the Dog Saw, is a collection of his essays from The New Yorker where he has worked as a journalist since 1996 according to his wikipedia page. I’ve only glimpsed the intro to this book but am very eager to read it. Loved The Tipping Point and Outliers especially. Blink is interesting but I’m still not sure I entirely buy into the premise. (ah, ever the skeptical GenXer, even in regards to one of my own — yeah, I wish I could consider MG a peer. HA!)
Levitt’s new book, SuperFreakenomics (nice little play on the Rick James song there) is the follow up to his his first book, Freakenomics (2005), which he co-authored with journalist Stephen J. Dubner (b.1963), also a GenXer. Levitt and Dubner turn economis on it’s head by applying the economic thought process or whatever you call it to non-traditional subject matter, from drug dealing to global warming — often to much criticism as well as praise. But they wouldn’t be a GenXers if they didn’t ruffle a few feathers in such a traditional field. Levitt’s economic take on things is fascinating, and he has the uncanny ability to remove all emotional/more predjudice from his researh, which perhaps sounds like a a “not good” thing but it seems essential to this particular kind “pure thinking,” (whatever tha means, right) the results of which can be mucked up later with barnacles of emotion and sentimentality and morality — junk like that. I’ve just started SuperFreakenomics but am already ready to drink the Kool Aid a second time. Glug glug glub. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh. And you will too!
…comes via JenX67 (as if I even had to say it — all bow down to the goddes off all things Generation X).
And thank God too, right. About time.
I know, I know! I change my featured blog about as often as I change the sheets, that is if I was the one who changed the sheets — wifey does that, and quite regularly too. But I’m just saying, if I was the one doing the changing it wouldn’t be often and thus the joke would work. Still, I change my underwear quite regularly, you know, when I think of it.
Anyhoo…
The new blog is called The Slacker Factor, and looks to be very promising. Be sure to check out the About section because JenX67 was spot on when she said that the authors bios are quite clever.
I for one am quite please to know that their are other GenXers out their who are not only are not ashamed of their slackerdom (eh?) but embrace it even proudly flaunt it.
What is a recent Washington Post article (which I was hipped to by The Gen X Files blog) saying about GenXer attitudes in light of the current recession?
They’re antsy and edgy, tired of waiting for promotion opportunities at work as their elders put off retirement.
Huh. Doesn’t sound all that different than before the recession or during the last recession or before that one too. But there is something that’s different compared to when GenX workers were the age that Millennials are now. And that is this:
A good number of them are just waiting for the economy to pick up so they can hop to the next job, find something more fulfilling and get what they think they deserve. Oh, and they want work-life balance, too.
That’s right. Screw loyalty! To any company anyway. Because we’ve learned the hard way that such loyalty will get you nothing in the end.
I learned it long before I entered the work force, when I was witness to General Motors attempts to force my father out of his job as an engineer before he was ready. He worked for GM for 35 years but that mattered little because it was cheaper to higher a younger person who would work for less. I say attempts because my old man is stubborn as hell and he wouldn’t budge until he got a good retirement package, even when they demoted him to a basically a data entry clerk. Of course, years later GM reneged on their deal to provide health coverage to my father and mother for the rest of their lives.
I learned it again when, in my first foray into the corporate world, I (along with others) was booted in order to balance a budget. Of course, it wasn’t put that way but it didn’t need to be said.
More recently, I learned that there is no loyalty in the economic world when CitiCard arbitrarily hiked my APR from 12.24% to 17.99%. No real reason was given for this increase, although later I was reminded of the bill that goes into effect in Feb. 2010 that cracks down on the credit card companies; they’re all uping their rates before that law goes into effect. Fuckers! And it didn’t matter that I’d had a CitiCard for 17 years, that I’ve always paid my bill on time, that my wife also has a CitiCard, that our mortgage is through CitiBank or Citigroup or whatever the fuck they call themselves. And this is a company that was given government bailout funds.
But enough ranting. Because this whole situation has me wondering. What will come of GenXers being put out of work and not being afford the oppor5tunity to return to the same level again. Perhaps a resurgence in creative endeavors, not just technology-driven but in terms of art and Literature, music and movies, poetry etc. Certainly family cohesiveness will become stronger. Which is to say, as the article notes, Generation X is tought, resiliant, creative, and we’ve been here before. So bring it!
Which do I read first?
Stephen King’s new novel, Under the Dome?
or
Douglas Coupland‘s new novel, Generation A?
How to choose? How to choose?
The King novel is over a 1,00o pages but I don’t really find that very daunting. In fact, I’m quiet undaunted by it, very much eager to read it. Perhaps because the plot is similar to The Simpon’s Movie — small town in Maine gets trapped under invisible forcefield dome and chaos and conflict ensue. Also reminds me a little of The Stand, my favorite King book. Perhaps because they are both, in their ways, about societal collapse, a theme that has intersted me, well, ever since I can remember really. I’ve always suspected that has, at least in part, something to do with growing up under the threat of nuclear annihilation via a conflict between Russia and the United States. That and seeing Night of the Living Dead when I was pretty young.
Of course, King is a Boomer but I think his work has been important to Generation X. It has been to me anyway. Maybe he’s of significant to Boomers, I don’t really know and don’t really care. It’s arguable whether his work is “serious” or can be labeled “Literature.” In fact there was a time when I refused to even consider the possibility that he was anything but a pulp horror writer, a good one to be sure but nothing more legit than that. But I’ve since fallen off that high horse. There’s stuff of King’s that I like and King stuff that I don’t like. Salem’s Lot, The Shining, The Stand, Misery — I like. Tommyknockers, Dolores Claiborne, Duma Key — not so much.
Still, my anticipation for the Coupland novel has been greater and existed longer. Not just because it is Coupland, although unlike with King I will read anything Coupland produces. Speaking of which, some of the reviews I’ve read about Generation A have been mixed at best, which is why I stopped reading them. In any case, I like the set up of Generation A, which is also in a way about societal collapse. All the bees have died, or so it seems.
I’ve begun Under the Dome so for now I will stick with it. But I’m willing to chuck it if it ceases to tickle my fancy. As I’ve gotten older (41 and counting) I’ve lost my patience for books that don’t “do it for me.” I’m not wasting the time.
Also, Coupland’s from Canada and I’m an American dammit. And there’s nothing more American than Stephen King-eque carange not to mention odd phrases like “happy crappy.”
