Friday, March 13, 2009

What crap ..

... On Campus, Vampires Are Besting the Beats. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Where are the Germaine Greers, the Jerry Rubins, the Hunter Thompsons, the Richard Brautigans -- those challenging, annoying, offensive, sometimes silly, always polemic authors whom young people used to adore to their parents' dismay?
Mostly mercifully forgotten. Ever here of things being dated? Of course, for many baby boomers nothing is dated that pertains to them.

1 comment:

  1. Anonymous2:06 PM

    The points of reference are interesting. That writer compares today's college kids to her peers 40 years ago and finds them wanting. But when I think back to my time in college 20 years ago, I don't recall many of my peers engaging in any recreational reading. Being eager to carve out time to read novels for pleasure strikes me as an improvement.

    And why his he asking what happened to Hunter S. Thompson? A quick Google search suggests that Thompson is on syllabus after syllabus. He's joined the unofficial canon, and his books are now what the People in Charge want kids to read--which I suspect saps him of much of his earlier allure...

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