COLUMNS
Talk Show 14 with Elisa Albert, Anita Diamant, Michael Lowenthal & Jim Shepard
/ Jaime Clarke
06.02.08
TALK SHOW 14: Generational Trauma
Elisa Albert is the author of the short story collection How This Night is Different. She is an adjunct assistant professor of creative writing at Columbia University and an editor at large of Jewcy.com. Free Press/Simon & Schuster have just published her first novel, The Book of Dahlia. Visit Elisa at www.elisaalbert.com.
Anita Diamant’s first work of fiction, The Red Tent was published in 1997 and was awarded the 2001 Booksense Book of the Year. She is the author of two other novels, Good Harbor , and The Last Days of Dogtown, six non-fiction guides to contemporary Jewish life and Pitching My Tent, a collection of personal essays. Visit Anita at www.anitadiamant.com.
Michael Lowenthal is the author of three novels: Charity Girl, Avoidance, and The Same Embrace. His stories have been widely anthologized, most recently in Best New American Voices 2005 and collections from Tin House and Nerve.com. The recipient of fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the Bread Loaf and Wesleyan writers' conferences, and the Massachusetts Cultural Council, Lowenthal teaches creative writing in the low-residency MFA program at Lesley University. He also serves on the Executive Board of the literary human rights organization PEN New England. For more information, please visit www.MichaelLowenthal.com.
Jim Shepard is the author of six novels and three collections of stories, most recently, Like You’d Understand Anyway, which was a finalist for the National Book Award. He teaches at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts.
––Name one of the greatest traumas of your generation.
Albert: By my “generation”, I assume you mean people born in the summer of 1978, right? Okay, so, I have to say that the school year of 1993/4 was pretty intensely traumatic for us. Within the span of some measely months, River Phoenix OD’d, Kurt Cobain committed suicide, and OJ (allegedly or whatever) killed his wife and a random friend of hers. This trio of mortality insanity was a lot at once, and included some powerful players in our collective cultural consciousness. It also sort of thrust the fact of violent, untimely death right up under our cushy, adolescent little noses. (That or, I suppose, George W. Bush stealing the f**king election in 2000. But I still can’t deal with that one, so never mind.)
Diamant: The AIDS crisis of the 1980s.
Lowenthal: So many traumas, so little time! September 11 is the obvious one, but too much has probably been said about that already (see: Rudy Giuliani campaign, 2007). On the other end of the spectrum, the ball rolling through Bill Buckner's legs in the 1986 World Series caused its own kind of generational PTSD, at least here in Red Sox Nation. But the one I'm going to go with is George Bush's reelection in 2004. His initial "election" was trauma enough––forcing us to let go of any notion that the Supreme Court operates above political partisanship, etc., etc.––but in the wake of this utter disaster there was a sense that perhaps it was a fluke; that Bush's "Hey, let's all share some Beer Nuts" publicity machine was slick enough to have fooled America once, but not twice; and that millions of Americans, stung by Bush's illegal and immoral reign, would be more energized than ever to depose him. And so, when he managed to win AGAIN, and this time probably (though perhaps not) legitimately, even after having caused the deaths of so many Americans and Iraqis, even after having ruined America's standing in the international community, and even running against a legitimate war hero . . . well, this was just the definitive snuffing of all of our generations hopes.
Shepard: I'm not sure whether it's my generation or not, but I still viscerally remember coming home from first grade to discover my father standing in the driveway, waving his arms to me and shouting to me before I even got into the house that President Kennedy had been shot. His shouting and arm-waving––the fact that he was evidently so unmoored by the event––floored me, and made me feel somewhat the way he did: as though someone had just pulled the rug out from under everything we believed in. So somebody––or the world––could just do *that*? Apparently they could. It was a lesson we'd have reinforced throughout the Sixties.
Elisa Albert is the author of the short story collection How This Night is Different. She is an adjunct assistant professor of creative writing at Columbia University and an editor at large of Jewcy.com. Free Press/Simon & Schuster have just published her first novel, The Book of Dahlia. Visit Elisa at www.elisaalbert.com.
Anita Diamant’s first work of fiction, The Red Tent was published in 1997 and was awarded the 2001 Booksense Book of the Year. She is the author of two other novels, Good Harbor , and The Last Days of Dogtown, six non-fiction guides to contemporary Jewish life and Pitching My Tent, a collection of personal essays. Visit Anita at www.anitadiamant.com.
Michael Lowenthal is the author of three novels: Charity Girl, Avoidance, and The Same Embrace. His stories have been widely anthologized, most recently in Best New American Voices 2005 and collections from Tin House and Nerve.com. The recipient of fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the Bread Loaf and Wesleyan writers' conferences, and the Massachusetts Cultural Council, Lowenthal teaches creative writing in the low-residency MFA program at Lesley University. He also serves on the Executive Board of the literary human rights organization PEN New England. For more information, please visit www.MichaelLowenthal.com.
Jim Shepard is the author of six novels and three collections of stories, most recently, Like You’d Understand Anyway, which was a finalist for the National Book Award. He teaches at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts.
––Name one of the greatest traumas of your generation.
Albert: By my “generation”, I assume you mean people born in the summer of 1978, right? Okay, so, I have to say that the school year of 1993/4 was pretty intensely traumatic for us. Within the span of some measely months, River Phoenix OD’d, Kurt Cobain committed suicide, and OJ (allegedly or whatever) killed his wife and a random friend of hers. This trio of mortality insanity was a lot at once, and included some powerful players in our collective cultural consciousness. It also sort of thrust the fact of violent, untimely death right up under our cushy, adolescent little noses. (That or, I suppose, George W. Bush stealing the f**king election in 2000. But I still can’t deal with that one, so never mind.)
Diamant: The AIDS crisis of the 1980s.
Lowenthal: So many traumas, so little time! September 11 is the obvious one, but too much has probably been said about that already (see: Rudy Giuliani campaign, 2007). On the other end of the spectrum, the ball rolling through Bill Buckner's legs in the 1986 World Series caused its own kind of generational PTSD, at least here in Red Sox Nation. But the one I'm going to go with is George Bush's reelection in 2004. His initial "election" was trauma enough––forcing us to let go of any notion that the Supreme Court operates above political partisanship, etc., etc.––but in the wake of this utter disaster there was a sense that perhaps it was a fluke; that Bush's "Hey, let's all share some Beer Nuts" publicity machine was slick enough to have fooled America once, but not twice; and that millions of Americans, stung by Bush's illegal and immoral reign, would be more energized than ever to depose him. And so, when he managed to win AGAIN, and this time probably (though perhaps not) legitimately, even after having caused the deaths of so many Americans and Iraqis, even after having ruined America's standing in the international community, and even running against a legitimate war hero . . . well, this was just the definitive snuffing of all of our generations hopes.
Shepard: I'm not sure whether it's my generation or not, but I still viscerally remember coming home from first grade to discover my father standing in the driveway, waving his arms to me and shouting to me before I even got into the house that President Kennedy had been shot. His shouting and arm-waving––the fact that he was evidently so unmoored by the event––floored me, and made me feel somewhat the way he did: as though someone had just pulled the rug out from under everything we believed in. So somebody––or the world––could just do *that*? Apparently they could. It was a lesson we'd have reinforced throughout the Sixties.
