Surprise, surprise. There’s a new book out called Generation Me that Simon & Schuster is giving the big push. Expect to hear lots of blather on radio and tv about what narcissistic losers the current generation of young people are. I’ve been teaching college English since 1969, so I meet a sample of college students every year. Except that women and minority students now take themselves more seriously than they did then, I don’t see a big difference.

The young are a convenient whipping boy or girl for whatever’s wrong with the world. The Virginia legislature recently banned cell phone use for drivers under 18. This is their way of not dealing with the fact that anyone driving with a cell phone is a bad idea. When I go about my pedestrian business and almost get run down in cross walks on a daily basis by people driving SUVs, clueless in Cell Phone Land, the drivers usually aren’t under 18. Cars kill more people than guns, year in, year out: 40,000+ in the US just like clockwork. Public hue and cry? Only about young drivers, especially young drunk drivers. Maybe a transportation system that puts everyone using it at the mercy of the competence of every other user is an inherently dumb (often lethal) system? When we boomers are all half-blind with the reaction time of drugged sloths, are we still going to blame the young for danger on the road?

It seems the only way the young can catch a break is by dying in Iraq. How narcissistic of them—sent there by leaders who seem to live in their own little world, racking up debt for those worthless young people to pay.

As she points out, the author of Generation Me is part of the generation she’s critiquing. Born in 1971, she has a Ph.D. in psychology and a weighty list of impressive publications. I’m sure it’s a good book, but I can’t help noticing that the self-esteem talk she criticizes seems to have worked out okay for her. The first issue of Ms. came out in 1970. I remember it. It was a big damn deal. My bright women students back then rarely dreamed of getting a doctorate. Many planned to find a husband in college before they graduated. (I kid you not). Things changed. If that means we now have a generation scoring higher on a narcissism scale because they believe they can be anything they want to be, I think the species is all the better for it.

All generations of young people are inexperienced and inadequately prepared to deal with life’s vicissitudes. I take that to be the young mammalian condition. So they figure it out, like every other generation. Books like Generation Me are part of that process I suppose. Let’s hope the young do a better job with the world than the mess we’re handing them.

I just finished Jeff Ford‘s second collection of short stories, The Empire of Ice Cream.  I loved his first collection The Fantasy Writer’s Assistant and Other Stories, and his second is easily its equal.  For my money, Ford is the best short story writer in fantasy today.  While Empire has received much praise for his highly literate and effectively nostalgic ghost stories like “Botch Town” and “The Trentino Kid,” my favorite Ford stories are the more twisted oddities built around a marvelously realized pseudo-science or skewed reality, like the title story, “The Weight of Words,” and “A Man of Light.”  If you want to read a fantasy writer people will be talking about long after we’re all pushing up daisies, check out Ford’s work.  Don’t like short stories?  His novels are equally compelling.  I’d start with The Well-Built City Trilogy—The Physiognomy, The Memoranda, and The Beyond.

I was proud to be a Texan when the Dixie Chicks exercised their brains and free speech rights way back when, so I was delighted to see them vindicated at the Grammy Awards. I’m also a passionate fan of their music and often listen to it when I write. About the time they insulted the Emperor’s clothes, there was a website that included a list of books they recommended. The Watch was ever so briefly on that list. It wasn’t exactly the best time to come out with a novel whose sympathetic protagonist is a famous anarchist.

How times change. If you don’t believe me, check out The Worldometer.

With all that’s going on in the world, the news is inundated with Anna Nicole Smith.  Have we had a national lobotomy or what?  Rest in peace, Anna.

What are you doing this weekend? Do you think escalating the war in Iraq is a bad idea? May I suggest a visit to the nation’s capital Saturday? Assemble on the National Mall, between 3rd and 7th Streets, at 11 am. Rally 11am-1pm. March will kick off at 1pm. If you’ve never helped fill up the Mall, it’s an experience I highly recommend. Sarah and I hope to see you there. For more information, see the United for Peace and Justice website. Give your legislators something to think about while they’re deciding, as Chuck Hagel put it, whether they might not be better suited to selling shoes than leading the country if they can’t manage to speak out now. Democracy and freedom begin at home.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I’m looking for an 80’s sf novel to replace Neuromancer in the literature class I teach most summers at Virginia Commonwealth University. I’ve just read Haruki Murakami‘s Hard-Boiled Wonderland and The End of the World and liked it almost as much as his Kafka on the Shore, which I plan to teach in an urban fantasy class. Hard-Boiled etc. is actually a science fiction novel with a cyberpunk trope, though a decidedly odd one, published in 1985. Science fiction, IMHO, can use all the odd it can get. Like Gibson and Blade Runner, which I plan to show, it draws heavily upon Raymond Chandler. Set in a Japan seen through the eyes of a character steeped in American culture, it makes an interesting companion to the cyberpunk west steeped in Japanese culture which is the mainstay of American cyberpunk. Anyway, it’s now on the shortlist for the slot.

I can scarcely believe it. Just as I was about to write about Frank Hargrove, the Republican lawmaker in Virginia who told black Virginians to “just get over” slavery, John Warner, our senior Republican Senator comes out against President Surge and says he’ll vote for the Senate resolution opposing escalation. Opposing the Prez isn’t just for the left anymore. Way to go, John!
As for Hargrove, he made a factual error in his claims. He said that none of the lawmakers now sitting had anything to do with slavery. Ever hear of Jim Crow, Frank? Slavery: The Sequel? I’m younger than Hargrove, and I remember the Whites Only signs and all the other trappings of American apartheid. Slavery didn’t end with the Emancipation Proclamation.  State-supported oppression lasted well into Hargood’s adult life.

As we all await the commander-in-chief’s speech tomorrow night, may I suggest the  documentary, Why We Fight as useful background information?  Freedom, victory, safety—Daddy’s once again going to truck out the same old lies.  Who are the chumps who still believe him?

We’ve been having perfect weather here—dry and sunny in the 70’s—so Sarah and I took advantage of it by riding over the river to Southside on our bikes.  We locked them near the bridge, then hiked along the river and up through Forest Hill Park to a new Mexican restaurant on Forest Hill, then to a used book store close by.  Then we hiked back to our bikes.  The river was running high, and the views were spectacular with all the leaves off the trees.  It was perfect until we returned to our bikes to find that someone had snapped off the valve stems on our front tires.  We were 3 miles from home, we’d already walked 4.  We hoofed it home, returned with the car, got new tubes for the bikes.  It’s sad someone would do something like that just for the sheer assholery of it, but we didn’t let it spoil our good time.  After dinner we went to see “Deja Vu” at the Byrd, and it was a good Byrd movie ($1.99 a ticket in a gorgeous vintage movie palace is tough to complain about).  The plot is loaded with holes, but it’s a good ride, and we both like Denzel Washington in just about anything.

I finished reading Haruki Murakami‘s beautiful novel Kafka on the Shore a couple of days ago and still haven’t recovered from the experience. It was the first Murakami I’ve read—I don’t know how he escaped my notice before—but I intend to read more. I don’t think I’ve ever so willingly or completely surrended my disbelief to a novel before. I was quite thoroughly seduced—but not abandoned— for the book has stayed with me. One of the qualities I enjoy and admire is his refusal to let the fiction collapse into Meaning, the English Class obsession. He says in an interview “When you read a good story, you just keep reading. When I write a good story, I just keep writing.” I could feel that joyous sense as I read—that we were both having a good time. I read it because it was awarded the World Fantasy Award for 2005—which it richly deserves.