In Green Day’s early moments, they played to about six people in Bakersfield. My punk friends always laugh about it. I just felt like telling you that and now I have to go check out their new album. While I hate admitting this since D.R. is watching, I’m still a big fan of Lloyd Cole. Only he’s turned so grey. What’s happening to us??

I loved what you wrote about Gen Xers all being late bloomers. It’s true. Strangely, all this video game talk lately makes me want to start playing them again. I’ve been in a drought and happily stay away from them, sort of. It’s like quitting smoking I’m thinking.

I think 9/11 affected us all but I never thought about how it affected our generation. Maybe that’s the missing element or theme in a book of which I serialized about 1/3 here on TheNervousBreakdown. The theme might be there and I don’t even realize it! It’s in my archives and called Thick White Crust. It might me worth a read. It’s also a dual-ethnic piece on Latino culture. I’ve been thinking of posting more of it.

Did Gen X play a big role in Obama getting elected? I agree with you there. In fact, for us being slackers, I’m guessing as a generation we’ve accomplished a lot. What all of that is, I’m still not sure yet. hahaha

Thanks again for your words of wisdom. I need to go read Microserfs.

9/11 deeply affected me. Reading the NY Times obits–reading about so many people who were exactly or close to my age and thinking about what they will never live to accomplish. Lately I’ve been reading stories about things our Gen is doing–for example take a look at John Wood, founder of Room to Read as an example. I think we are responsible along with BB and GenY for putting Obama in the White House. There are many in our generation still sitting in a haze of pot smoke on a couch somewhere, but I also see a lot of us gettin’ stuff done.

Have you listened to Green Day’s new album 21st Century Breakdown? I am now obsessed with this album like none other in a while. I feel this is an anthem for GenX and describees so much of what I’ve felt over the last decade.

Your Jason is my Rick Molotovos even so. Both surviving by the seat of their pants, enamored with a girl that’s like some boddhisaatva (sp.?) goddess. I have scenes in citrus girl (dead generation) where the main female character is like Artemis walking through the desert. And she’s the citrus girl because deep inside she’s filled with vitriol, acid, because, really we all had to be burning inside to get through those years.

I agree with what you have to say and really appreciate that Banned for Life captures some 1980s subculture. While mine is 1990s subculture, our stories overlap in amazing ways. Some publisher should package them together so we can all make bazillions and influence new subculture to explode within their scenes and communities… or just within themselves and their self-identities.

I think youthful rebellion is often — even usually — generalized rather than specific. I mean, one problem I always had with psychoanalysis was that it attempted to trace angst to biographical events — “Daddy hit me” or whatever — when there’s ample reason to feel angry or sad simply by being alive. It reminds me of the classic exchange in “The Wild One”: a woman in a bar saying to Marlon Brando, “What are YOU rebelling against?” and Brando replying, “Waddya got?” Indeed!

It’s an embarrassing thing to say about oneself, but I absolutely see myself as a rebel, as I didn’t for much of my life. My parents certainly saw me that way, but I thought of myself, as a teenager, as being pretty typical for my age, albeit a bit more angry. And why was I angry? Mostly because I was bored. I think a lot of American kids were and are bored, without usually knowing just how deep it runs. That’s what happens when you’re moored to a screen of one kind or another. With me it was TV, which I’d watch for at least five hours a day — even though I hated TV! I was always complaining about it, yet I couldn’t resist the temptation, because it was momentarily entertaining, and because I was spoiled by being spoon-fed what I was too lazy to seek out in a more enriching form. And so it continues for a great many kids, who are over-stimulated in some ways, with a constant barrage of electric light and sensational images being flashed at them, while at the same time they’re under-stimulated emotionally and intellectually and aesthetically — and, I think, socially. The smart ones, like Peewee, not only realize what’s happening to them, but they sooner or later do something about it, seeking out the good stuff — the nourishing stuff — and banding with like-minded others. The music underground is and always was largely comprised of such kids. Meantime the kids who aren’t so smart, or in any case have never had the right guidance, go on absorbing all of this gunk, which leaves them angry and depressed in ways they can’t articulate, and it emerges in fucked-up behavior, mostly of the passive-aggressive sort. I have my fair share of faults, but passive-aggression isn’t one of them. And it took me a long time to realize that I didn’t think and behave and live like anyone else of my wide acquaintance, and that that did, finally, make me a rebel.

It’s funny that you mention war, because the absence of one after Vietnam may have been another factor in Gen X angst. I think, unfortunately, war-making is programmed into us, or at least it is in males, and if there’s no outlet for what I regard as our natural aggression, it can and does turn inward. Again, the word “passive” comes to mind. You want to see a movie? Whatever. You want to order Chinese? Whatever. What do you think of the situation in Washington? Whatever. I’m leaving you. Whatever. That was famously the Gen X slogan – “whatever” – and I always took it to mean that one thing doesn’t have any more value than the next, and that action is futile, because this was a generation that barely knew what action was. It was psychically castrated. Also, it may have been defining itself against the Boomers, who were famously active and who also, as far as I’m concerned, failed miserably, like kids in an old movie who steal a car and go for a joyride and, once they’re stopped by a cop, instantly become law-abiding citizens. Gen X was very attuned to the failures of the Boomers, I think, and resentful of Boomer hypocrisy, and somewhere a collective decision was made to take a different path.

Of course, this has all been said before, and said, I’m sure, better. It’s hard to word myself well when I’m pressed for time. Then, too, it’s a very complicated discussion, and it’s so easy to reach for clichés and generalizations. I suppose there’s plenty of both in “Banned,” but it’s in the dialogue and not, I hope, in the characters themselves. I mean, I certainly wasn’t trying to make Peewee a Gex X archetype, though maybe in the end that’s what he amounts to. It’s impossible to extricate him from his time and ours.

With that said, and having just reread it, I think it’s good that it sat in the most popular category for so many months here on TNB. It made me proud that this strange piece about Generation X could interest readers. I saw it there, but I wouldn’t reread it. And so your comment sat for so long being unanswered.

I think that maybe, like a lot of writers might do, I sort of sat back, hoping someone would suddenly send me a message and say: “Your philosophy works! Let’s publish this thing!” Historian John Arthur Maynard, author of “Venice West” about the LA beats edited the thing. He used to let me look through unpublished beat writings and ask me what I thought. “Read this, Nick. Then tell me what you think.” He knew I lived a counterculture life.

Now that I have read “Banned for Life” I feel like I do need to dust off the novel, that the 90s are far enough behind us that it does seem like reading literary history rather than reading about something that may have happened last week. Sort of gives it more value. History does that. So, your work has inspired. We sort of inspired each other.

The 1990s are a weird beast. Even more weird is Generation X. Have people forgotten about us? That was sort of my point by posting the Dead Generation. To see if we were forgotten, or if we’re still some kind of cruel novelty. Generation X shouldn’t be looked at through the filter of dead rock stars like Kurt Cobain. But oh how music shaped our generation. The line I pull from this piece that defines our generation and this book is “MTV-sucked rebellious youth…” We were rebelling against something, but we often didn’t know what. Look at Peewee in your book. He’s so angry and acted so smart. But he contradicted himself a lot. He was just angry, raw Gen X youth. And that’s a lot of Gen X. No need for a war. We did enough damage to ourselves without that.

But I don’t say this by way of a plug; I say it simply because it’s interesting to see another writer’s approach to the same — or in any case related — subject. I’d be curious to know what, six months after posting it, you think of the piece now — that is, if the reaction you got at TNB has in any way influenced your opinion. I, for one (and I’m obviously far from the only one), am floored by the prose — the compound sentences and long paragraphs and rush of thoughts.

And for that I am eternally sorry.

Children of a Loser God

Growing up to face the millennium
after being threatened with
the glories of impending doom
these children must now make a future
out of the moral rot and decay
that remains after a
decade and a half of
ETHICAL CLEANSING
conducted on behalf
(ours and theirs)
and with our silent blessing
by the major
economic powers.

The children of the
“LOVE” generation
of Hippies
Abbie Hoffman and Donovan
Janis and Jerry and Jim and Jimmie and Joan
under the protective wing of
Generation X(cess)
turning their faces towards
the hydrogen light bulb
praying for a death ray to
lobotomize them and
make them into
ZOMBIES!
TRULY,
FOREVER
AND
A DAY
These children of Generation
Why?
Me?
dead- ‘Beats’
a contra- band
lovers of:
black leather, black hair, black lipstick, black finger-nail polish
black widow spider tattoos, black jackboots,
black “Goths” and “Vampires”
They’re lost
futureless
disrespected
always hungry
never, ever fulfilled
never satisfied
You hear the agony
of their disappointment
in every word
see it in every look.
They could be models for
Rodin’s The Burgers of Calais
or a Bosch interpretation of Dante’s
Stages of Hell.

And Yet
by the light of day
they go to school
and work the nameless jobs
competing with the Mexicans
for the almighty dollar.
Still
they struggle ahead
smiling at dumb luck
and the sheer magnitude of
the days as
fate tosses the dice
Heroically battling the odds
these lost
milkcarton children.
Searching for a Never-Never Land
that no one thought
ever existed
Searching for a world
to get lost in
Looking for a way out
(but not forever)

These are
the Children
of a loser God.

Uche - You are the everyman. No, that’s not right. Jack of all trades, master of all. No, seriously, you are the only person I know who can spout Feynman, Tennyson and Eminem at the word go. I wish I had half your energy. Wonder Twin power activate?

Right on, Gina! That’s a great analysis and follow up… I think you’re spot on about what the generation has become. This blog is an example of a movement of sorts. Will the publishing world recognize it? What can be done with it? How can writers become more involved, help each other, connect to each other, contribute in more ways to a collective and expand from the bogosphere? Or is it really like Jason says, every man and woman for themselves? So much to ponder…

Once again, is a cyber movement enough and post-college groups enough? Has Gen X done all it can? Is there a multi-generational movement out there that can be made? What’s the next big collective. Are we it? Is it somewhere else? What can be done? I don’t have all the answers. Just posing questions…

And thank God somebody found Uche!

Rive to me sounds like a Kerouac hater who thinks literary movements are only for the young. When in fact anyone can start a literary movement at any point in their life, at any age. A literary movement doesn’t stem from youth, it stems from passion!

Instead of picking on NL on a point you’re not going to win, why don’t you go write your own shit!

I’ve heard Erika express similar thoughts, but I don’t know, I don’t know, I’m not sure, I have…a…rather…dissolute…sense of what I should consider my generation.

First of all, I have no common sense of which whom I identify with. I’m clearly the New Nigeria generation, born during or in the immediate aftermath of the war (see I think I’ve already mentioned that poxy war 3 times in my time here, so I guess it is to a large extent emblematic for me). I’m clearly the Commonwealth generation of the American tilt, raised to play Scrabble with Chamber’s dictionary, and then having to figure out that crazy American Official. And of course, I’m Hip-Hop Gen One, bonding with peers from five continents by righteous arguments as to whether MC Solaar (of France) or KRU (of Malaysia) best held down the spirit of the Native Tongues.

There is no way I can make a label stick to all that slop, so I’m not sure what I’d call my generations. I definitely don’t attach any sense of dissolution or disillusionment thereto, so “lost”, “dead” and “slacker” don’t work for me in the least. On the contrary, I carry the feeling that socially, culturally and in literature my generations are accomplishing as much as any others in history, and certainly a lot more than the soi-disant “baby boomers”. To take literature, I’ve lived my life in a sort of explosion of word and language, to the extent that even when, as now, I’m not surrounded by huddled, buzzing peers, I carry too much left-over energy for any sense of disconnection.

But you’ve really opened up an interesting line of contemplation and discussion. I’m fighting a bit of flu, but as soon as I’m up for it, I think I’ll expand on what I’ve said.

See? You’re another Gen X writer. A great one. I’ve read some of your words behind the scenes. And I’m hungry for more. We have yet to storm through L.A. like we own the damn place. Let’s do it soon! Yes, yes, and yes! The veggie plates and adventures are calling…

As what I would consider a fairly (emphasis on fairly)well adjusted gen Xer, I am more worries about Gen Y to be frank. Minds turning to jello as they zone out on MTV reality shows and get hard over the newest Grand Theft Auto video game, holding their parents hostage for the newest I-Phone…until the next incarnation comes a long. Deuce Bigalow is a ‘classic’ movie.

I worry about their benign disengagement from things that matter…
and the irony is, I will be working for one of them soon enough. Some 2.0 start up. Getting them lattes as they make their first million!

I do think writers need to congregate more and conspire to help one another. You know, meet face to face, cause a ruckus, and do so at least yearly…

The idea of a movement sounds attractive. Do you think there’s enough of an interest out there with artists who have the same beliefs and desire to connect, belong and grow?

Just wondering…

Try not to post or write e-mails when you’re feeling angry…you’ll have less to feel embarrassed about later. We’ve all been there bro…

I think you really hit on something though. The idea of “We are the collective breath that stops to say ‘what the #*@# are we all even doing here?!?’” Is a great point. I mean, we were at least asking that while standing at 7-11s dumping quarters into Galaga. Like, we knew we could be eating nachos with those quarters. But why when we could save the universe with those same quarters??

One of Rive’s points was that young people only showed up to Kerouac’s party. I guess they couldn’t look at his bio? But anyway, doesn’t matter who showed up, young, old, invalid or whatever (And Kerouac didn’t coin the word “beat” anyway. Another argument). But his work helped move a counterculture 10 years later. Which really means, he had a viable product and people bought his books. He didn’t make much, but pop culture took advantage too.

Viable products. Does Generation X still have viable products left in them? They already are selling literary products by the bushel load. But is there or should there be a new movement to ever help define that? I don’t know.

Depends what John B. and all those whippersnappers half his age would associate with. Because apparently that’s what happened with Kerouac’s work. Didn’t matter that he trapsed the country 10 years before. People associated with it in 1957.

On a side note. Anyone seen Uche??