Word: cohenable
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...course, Cohen also gives us the obligatory sideshow. Flannery O'Connor has said that she doubted "whether the texture of Southern life" is more inclined to the grotesque. After reading about some of the people Cohen, a Dallas native, meets, I began to doubt O'Connor's wisdom. We get a sample of graffiti "art" from a bad poet named Dirk. We get a someone named Dale's take on the AIDS epidemic, "Basically, its a combination of a virus from a goat and a cow that creates the HIV virus." We get Suzanne, a Vaiden, Mississippi native, speaking...
...Cohen acknowledges that one of the more "irritating lessons" he learned in the course of writing the book was that "contrary to my knee-jerk response, the previous efforts to define the twenty-something generation are not completely inaccurate." Fortunately, he goes to greater lengths to challenge the "them" responsible for formulating the shaky Gen-X hypothesis. He contradicts the image of twenty-somethings as "slackers" and "whiners" not with his own philosophical treatise, but with the stories of an amazingly diverse group of young people...
...section called "Believers," Cohen interviews a group of men and women who, despite their sometimes difficult lives, have an abiding belief in a simplified version of the American Dream. They want, in Cohen's words, "the house, the car, the kids." He talks to several married couples, all living in varying degrees of contentment. He also paints an interesting portrait of Rod, a painting contractor who grew up in a "solidly middle class" home, but is having genuine problems maintaining the same quality of life his parents...
...Twenty-Something American Dream is surprisingly compelling. Cohen's greatest asset is his willingness to let his subjects tell their own stories. He rejects the seductive dream of capturing the generation's collective consciousness. But it remains a tempting prospect. After all, who could possibly deny that universal generational ethos on the cusp of articulation in "Saturday Night Fever,' when he tells his sadly doomed dancing partner, "I'd dance wit' you, but you ain't, my dream girl or nothin...
...Cohen's book ends with a brief section, rather blandly titled. "Observations," in which he tries to form some of his own conclusions based on his experiences. He makes a decent effort to acknowledge the complexities of his subject, but the chapter is occasionally marred by digression. We don't really need to hear any more about Americans' distrust of the federal government, or what the author dubs "democrophobia...