From Washington Square: Who’s the Voice of Our Generation?
I’ve got another new post from Washington Square up this week. This time, I’m wondering about what writer speaks for our generation.
As writing grad students eager to set out on careers of our own, we often look for role models, young writers who have exploded onto the literary scene and left their mark on culture. There are plenty to choose from, including Dave Eggers, Gary Schteyngart, Zadie Smith, and Jonathan Lethem (a couple of whom have taught or will be teaching at NYU soon). But this Time article gave me pause. It argues that unlike the iconic writers of previous generations, there is no voice for us Gen Y’ers. No one has answered the call, this article claims, to step up and represent all that we have to worry about in the way that F. Scott Fitzgerald, Hemingway, or Jack Kerouac did in the past.
You make an interesting point, but I think it might also be possible that no single author captured “all of the twenties or thirties or sixties — and included all the agony, all the joy, all the heartache of being alive at that time in the world.” It may only seem like it from our limited perspective of looking back at a world in which many of the other voices simply weren’t heard.
While today’s culture may seem like it’s being fragmented, it’s also being democratized. More voices are able to tell their stories and find an audience than at any other time in human history. In the twenties or thirties or sixties, they never would have had the opportunity to publish or become part of the national dialogue, so their stories didn’t have a chance to survive to the present day.
So I don’t believe the days of the iconic authors are gone. I prefer to think that we’re just getting more of them and that they’re more diverse, so we’re now capturing more of the world’s experiences and emotions than ever before.