Salon has an interesting take on the movie The Rocker with Rainn Wilson.
Can Generation X grow old gracefully? Now that nearly half the generation that gave us grunge has turned 40, the question of whether slackerdom can mix with maturity looms. Adulthood implies many of the things this aging bunch has tried to reject, or at least question: marriage, parenthood, responsibility, authority. … Fishman, aka “Fish,” typifies Gen X’s Peter Pan-ish unwillingness to play by the established rules of growing up. In 2006, he’s a 40-ish loser doing telemarketing for a Cleveland insurance company. He is unmarried, unkempt and unemployed. He loses his apartment and has to move in with his sister.
This touches on precisely what I address in the latter half of my book, Slackonomics. Sandeep Kaushik, whose personal story is in Chapter 12, calls it “Delayed Onset Adulthood Syndrome.” Here is one quote from his story:
I thought me and my friends, we were really special. We were touched by the gods. We were so clever and talented. In this effortless way, we were going to live the life without having to lift a finger. We were going to hang out on the porch, drink beer, and be incredibly successful. I was sure of it. It was a given. There was no thought about how to map this out. I just assumed, being who we were, having whatever skills or talents we had would take us there. I didn’t realize smart people are actually a dime a dozen. A lot of people have talents. But do you know how to develop a career? Do you know how to make your way in the world?
While Fishman goes into a 20 year tailspin, Sandeep’s struggle lasted about 10 years, which he pulls himself out of in a more typical if less dramatic way than becoming a rock star: Sandeep embraces a profession he enjoys even if it doesn’t lead to a lot of fame and fortune, and as a result, grows up a bit and finds it’s not so bad being married, having kids and owning a house in Seattle:
I always thought of myself as having one foot in adulthood and one foot in adolescence. I never thought I would end up so conventional, but I like what I do. I completely love Seattle. I go out drinking too much, but that’s just because there’s always someone to get a drink with. I’ve always been a restless sort, but I’m probably going to be here for the rest of my life and it doesn’t seem that bad.
A Gen X Rock ‘n’ Roll Fantasy? [Salon]
I’ve been digging Sandra’s commentaries on Marketplace for years (not to mention her writings and other work), so I’m like totally psyched that she she chose to include Slackonomics in her pick of three books to recommend on the Barnes & Noble website! Here’s what she had to say:
“It’s official. The Boomers suck! Self-styled ‘rebels,’ these silver-maned materialists toting surfboards while smugly growing their investments have bequeathed a fiduciary apocalypse Gen X now must – Mad Max-like – clean up, in our flaming trash cars! This is my take: yours may vary. A Suze Orman for the Deconstructionist set, Chamberlain is witty, brainy, fabulous. A necessary addition to any collapsing IKEA bookshelf.”
Click here to go to the Barnes & Noble guest reviewers section.
It’s unstoppable, people, this Slackonomics publicity train. Today I was on Seattle’s NPR station KUOW, tomorrow will be Wisconsin NPR (click here to listen to The Conversation on KUOW), and here are excerpts from a review and interview on Forbes.com:
Forbes.com: The 2004 article you wrote for the New York Observer painted a rather grim portrait of Gen X’s economic prospects. In Slackonomics, your tone was more cautiously optimistic. What changed?
Lisa Chamberlain: It’s a complex picture, and once I started looking at it more in depth–rather than just for a short article–the complexity of the picture just became more apparent. … You realize, “Wow, there’s a lot of creativity and adaptability going on,” and I really thought that that was as much a part of that story–that there is as much creativity as there is destruction, to use the subtitle from the book.
Read the whole interview here.
From the review:
Slackonomics is no hippy-dippy “everything’s going to be OK” self-help book. “Diminished expectations had become the defining force for this post-hippy, post-punk generation,” she writes. It’s not all gloom and doom, however. Chamberlain argues that these problems have made Generation X uniquely resilient and flexible.
I happened across a Gen X blog that reviewed my book and I couldn’t be more pleased that it actually resonates with someone who goes by “junkdrawer67: One GenXers Take on Stuff.” So here’s one GenX bloggers take on my book:
I was a little leery before reading it, dreading that it might be another dull book about economics, even if it was the economics of Generation X. It is anything but dull. … Slackonomics is the author’s term for Generation X’s particular economic predicament, history, mind-set, etc. And it is more than just some hip, pop culture, ironic wink. There’s good, quality stuff in here.
My hometown daily paper, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, reviewed Slackonomics last Sunday. As the editor-in-chief of a Village Voice-owned weekly in Cleveland (1999-2002), I spilled a good amount of ink beating up on the PD. Sometimes the paper deserved it and sometimes not, but it seems to be all water under the bridge — or maybe our criticism was irrelevant to begin with. Either way, I’m grateful for the positive, if somewhat disjointed review:
Cleveland Plain Dealer, August 3, 2008:
Cool word, slackonomics. Cool idea, too, to meld attitude and what Lisa Chamberlain admits is an intuitive grasp of economics in her prickly, entertaining book about the changing of the guard from baby boomer to Gen Xer. Studded with insight into pop culture and today’s turbulent society, “Slackonomics” aims to give Gen X, or people in their 30s and 40s, its props. … She has a testy, smart style, is well read and peppers her book with factoid strips and graphics. … The fluid marketplace Chamberlain explores is hard to pin down, let alone navigate. But she and her peers bespeak a flexibility and fearlessness suggesting they will not only survive, but also prevail — and, perhaps, guide the world to greater sense.