Generation X: tales for an accelerated culture

When you pick up this book (because you will) pay close attention to the year this book was published. Although the book was almost certainly written before that year, it came of age in 1991.

1991, that palindrom-ic year in which a whole generation of youth trembled at the brink of one of the most profound cultural, technological and societal revolutions in human history: pre-Internet but long past the finish line in the Space Race; post-Cold War but with Gulf War wounds freshly inflicted – we were about to make the leap, ready-or-not, into the Information Age.

Most demographers set the birth years for admission to the Gen-X club between ’61 and ’81. Not an exact science, but you get the idea. We (I am one of them) were the children born to the post-WWII Baby Boomers, itself a generation defined by a revolution: the radical 60’s zeitgeist. But by late 1980’s, our Revolution hadn’t quite gotten off the ground yet and as we gazed around at our ravaged planet with the freshly-sharpened critical skepticism that teenagers and 20-somethings so deftly wield, it was hard not to feel a little ripped off. ‘Look at the mess you left me in,’ comes to mind. And don’t say it’s just the age that we were; things were actually a mess, environmentally, socially, economically, and politically. And as the new kids on the block, we were only just beginning to realize how far-reaching the compounding interest was going to be on the mortgage the Boomer-bullies down the street had taken out on the future.

Now, this is not to place blame. Okay it is, but all of the planet’s problems are not entirely the fault of the Boomers. After all, they were a reactive generation in their own right, having themselves inherited a quivering, shell-shocked, post-war morass of a planet to deal with. And to my mind, the issue – at least by 1991 – was not that they had done nothing. I mean, come on, the Beatles; enough said. But the issue was that nothing had changed, despite the immense social impact and scope their own 60′s-era “Revolution” had, and continues to have. As they slid into adulthood, we Gen-Xer’s began to realize we were in real trouble and the immense gravitas of the situation, like the tension in the surface of a balloon right before the burst, is what Coupland’s kids are taking reprieve from in their atomic-neon desert bungalow-bunkers.

Coupland is known (now) as a visual artist and designer, and the book itself is graphic art as well literary art. Symbols, diagrams, and dictionary-style definitions that refer to the context of whatever story or discussion is occurring on a particular page pepper the margins of the text, a literary device known as “glossing” that originally derives from the Medieval Ages.

The overall effect of “Generation X” is that of a manual or handbook to the inner workings of Coupland’s dis-affected youth. They are not slackers, lazy and unambitious; they are simply nomadic; they are suffering from a self-induced alienation. Self-induced, because to take part in the world of 1991 going on around them still means towing the same Party line our parents did (even if, and especially because that Party is now corporate instead of Soviet.) So in the novel they have resisted, retreating to the desert where they can take a breath and slow down the acceleration towards seeming nothingness. Like soldiers battened down in a foxhole, they share the “tales” referred to in the title amongst themselves to pass the time. These tales are told mostly for comfort, but they serve to remind the characters of the meaningfulness of simply being human. They are an attempt to get back to the origin of the “self” amid all the consumer-waste faux-recycling culture they wade through. This is not “new-age” escapism or journey or anything like that. It is just an age; a stage, developmentally and theatrically.  And the setting is entirely appropriate.

It is ironic – and no accident – that the protagonists’ panic-room of choice is Palm Springs, a man-made golf-resort town afforded only by the very rich and close to the sites of the 50’s era atomic testing. Palm Spring’s rich-tourist clamour provides the insulation against the fallout of the material culture they are taking refuge from. And what is left after an atomic bomb detonates? Nothing. And when there’s nothing left, you have nothing left to lose, and thus a good place to start again.

Find this title in the Library’s catalogue

Submitted by Lee @ Cowichan Branch