I’ve been thinking about teen-agers. I have one myself now, and of course I was one once—in a different world at a different moment—and can remember the feeling. Everything was extremity. It still is. Four waves of feminism, digital connectivity, a global wellness movement, the injunction to “be kind,” the commonplace “it gets better”—none of it seems to have put much of a dent in teen-age misery, especially not of the kind that concerns me. Watching girls gather outside the multiplexes this past summer, choosing between “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer,” I thought, Yeah, that pretty much sums it up. Brittle, impossible perfection on the one hand; apocalypse on the other. I have never forgotten the years I spent stretched between those two poles, and there was a time when I believed that the intensity of my girlhood memories made me somewhat unusual—even that this was what had made me a writer. I was disabused of that notion a long time ago, during the early days of social networks. Friends Reunited, Facebook. Turns out there’s a whole lot of people in this world who feel they never lived as intensely as they did that one particular summer. “If teen-age me could see me now, she’d be so disgusted! ” I said that to a shrink, a few years ago. To which the shrink replied, “Why assume your fifteen-year-old self is the arbiter of all truth?” Well, it’s a good point, but it hasn’t stopped me from carrying her around on my shoulder. I don’t suppose, at this point, I’ll ever be rid of her.
Denne historien er fra November 27, 2023-utgaven av The New Yorker.
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Denne historien er fra November 27, 2023-utgaven av The New Yorker.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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LIFE ADVICE WITH ANIMAL ANALOGIES
Go with the flow like a dead fish.
CONNOISSEUR OF CHAOS
The masterly musical as mblages of Charles Ives
BEAUTIFUL DREAMERS
How the Brothers Grimm sought to awaken a nation.
THE ARTIFICIAL STATE
A different kind of machine politics.
THE HONEST ISLAND GREG JACKSON
Craint did not know when he had come to the island or why he had come.
THE SHIPWRECK DETECTIVE
Nigel Pickford has spent a lifetime searching for sunken treasure-without leaving dry land.
THE HOME FRONT
Some Americans are preparing for a second civil war.
PRESIDENT FOR SALE
On a mid-October Sunday not long ago sun high, wind cool-I was in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, for a book festival, and I took a stroll.
SYRIA'S EMPIRE OF SPEED
Bashar al-Assad's regime is now a narco-state reliant on sales of amphetamines.
TUCKER EVERLASTING
Trump's favorite pundit takes his show on the road.