On The Matter of Writers Speaking for The Generational We: Don’t.
This is quite wonderful! It’s another review of Super Sad Love Story — which, after all the great reviews of the book I’ve read, whether the reviewer enjoyed it or not, makes me think I need to read this book — that goes beyond the call of duty to merely review a book and instead seizes on the opportunity to talk about Bigger Picture Things. And my, how it is seized! Moments like this are wonderful:
The internet’s most ruinous effect on literacy may not be the obliteration of long-format journalism or drops in hardcover sales; it may be the destruction of the belief that books can be talked and written about endlessly.
Because I am all for pre-empting the shit you know may be talked on you, a la Eminem in the last scene of 8 Mile. “Haters” are frustrated by nothing more. There is obviously more great stuff here:
Sometimes I can almost visualize parts of myself, the ones I’m most proud of, atrophying. I wish I had an app to monitor it! I notice that my thoughts are homeopathic, that they mirror content I wish I weren’t reading. I catch myself performing hideous, futuristic gestures, like that “hilarious” moment three seconds into an intimate embrace in which I realize I’m literally rubbing my iPhone screen across his spine.
But then there’s this:
You really want to know what it is about 20-somethings? It’s this: we live longer now. But we also live less.
And this:
What else are we doing on the internet if not asserting our rank?
And this:
We can sympathize with each other and feel reassured that we’re not alone in our overeager consumption, denigrated self-control, and anxiety masked as ambition.
That third example almost aside (as the plural-possessive refers to the author and her friends, who may or may not Mean More than just them): Goddamn! How often are we seeing people speak for us in such matter-of-fact tones and generalizations these days? From Millennials Magazine to this noise, it seems like everyone is very eager to pigeonhole their 20-to-30-something contemporaries! This isn’t the first time n+1 has tried to speak for and/or to and/or about The Young Folks in a nothing-less-than-all-encompassing manner. Sure, this essay does delve into the first person! But assigning so much to a generation as opposed to “people I know” (read: presumably n+1 readers, other n+1 writers) or simply “I” strikes me as trying to dodge complete culpability for certain feelings, as if to say I’m not the only one that feels or lives this way, it’s everyone. At first I thought it was the presumption that got to me, but it’s the dodging that — as someone who tries very hard not to dodge any shit he is sure to throw in his own face — really rubs me the wrong way. How much different would these sentences read if they weren’t that way? Well:
You really want to know what it is about
20-somethingsme? It’s this: I live longer than those before me. But I also live less.
What else am I doing on the internet if not asserting my rank?
I can sympathize with others and feel reassured that I’m not alone in my overeager consumption, denigrated self-control, and anxiety masked as ambition.
I left the strikethrough in the first one so you could see just how different that sentence is even if you leave the “twentysomethings” assertion in there! Maybe I’m just projecting as someone on the internet who solely exists to assert my rank when I’m not living less or overeagerly consuming, lacking self-control, and asserting anxiety disguised as ambition. (See that first block quote, above!)
Maybe. What I know for a fact, however, is that I’m not eager to say I’m the voice of a generation, or anything, really other than me, let alone try to speak about it in such broad strokes. I would be bound to get it wrong, alienate readers, and worst of all, shift the responsibility for the experience at hand to anybody but me.
