They've been called "twenty-somethings," "baby-busters" and even "Generation X." From slackers and underachievers to lazy, selfish and dumb -- the adjectives used to describe people born from 1961 to 1981 have rarely produced good images.
But Neil Howe and Bill Strauss' book, 13th Gen, takes a different approach.
The book, released earlier this month, looks at what Howe and Strauss call the "13th Generation" as a product of all that has preceded it. Instead of saying the same old thing about how this generation doesn't carry its weight, Howe and Strauss say that it is responding to the problems left by the baby boomers.
The book is an interesting look at our generation and how it affects politics, economics and society in general. It's written as if Howe and Strauss, self-professed boomers, were writing it on a mainframe. It even has a twenty-something character called "crasher" who breaks in now and then to add the generational perspective, like the "top 10 TV shows that irrevocably shaped our shattered thought processes," then goes on to mention "the shazam/isis hour" and "mork and mindy."
The book is a study of a whole generation of individuals. It is full of examples of what "13ers" generally do and why they generally do it. The authors make extensive and interesting comparisons between this and other generations like it -- other American generations that have been pegged as "bad."
Howe and Strauss take complex issues and sum up the generational attitude toward them in sentences and phrases that get to the point --a point that usually rings true. For example, the generational attitude toward sex is expressed as, "Kids struggling to unlink sex from date rape, disease, and death."
It is refreshing to see positive characteristics attributed to this generation, like the fact that it will "restrengthen the American family" and serve as a "national anchor, calming the social mood and slowing the pace of social change."
Whenever a study looks at some group of people as large as a generation, it must generalize, and 13th Gen is no exception. This is one of the weak points of the book, as it gets tiresome to continually read how a whole generation of extremely diverse individuals does this or that in common. It's easy to think of exceptions.
Whole sections of the book are paragraph after paragraph of "facts" about how this generation acts, behaves, watches television. Even when they seem correct --or, maybe, especially when they seem correct -- these blanket generalizations start to get annoying.
Adding to the annoyance and in pursuit of political correctness, these generalizations are phrased as "he" in one paragraph, then as "she" in the next. This vacillation is awkward and almost confusing at times, drawing attention to the repetitiveness of these sections.
Hearing the typical 13er constantly referred to as "he" or "she" makes it appear as though the book was not written for the 13ers, but for older generations to get a better understanding of how this generation works, its motivations behind the seemingly unexplainable actions.
The inserts by "crasher" and quotes from various sources, like the They Might Be Giants lyrics "Particle man, particle man/Doing the things a particle can/What's he like?/It's not important," help to break some of the monotony of the examples with interesting and different points of view. The authors also use the quotes to emphasize major themes and the titles of each section come from the quotes.
The drawback of "crasher" and the quotes is that they are not strategically placed at the end of sections or paragraphs, so reading them is often awkward. The reader either has to jump ahead or jump back and read them after a section or paragraph so as not to interrupt the flow of reading.
Even with these drawbacks, the book is insightful and a great read. Although depressing for a 13er reader, the projections for the future of the 13th generation end the book on an upbeat note.
