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Balsamic Dreams : A Short But Self-important History of the Baby Boomer Generation (2001)

Considering how minuscule were the circulations of both Spy and Movieline, the magazines for which he wrote, I would imagine that most folks were first exposed to Joe Queenan, as I was, on Imus in the Morning. He's absolutely hilarious there : his sarcastic style is ideally suited to the format and he's got Imus continually directing him to new topics at which to spew venom. But after reading several of his books--all of which I've liked, but not loved--I'm beginning to wonder if he doesn't need a better editor to bring some form to his very funny observations.

Queenan's latest book, Balsamic Dreams, is intended to be an indictment of the Baby Boomer Generation, of which he is an embarrassed member. He's operating in what Norman Schwarzkopf might call a target rich environment here, and almost inevitably much of what he has to say is very amusing, even laugh-out-loud funny in places. But somehow, it's not as good a book as it should be.

There are a couple of problems. For one thing, he's really written a series of interconnected essays rather than one sustained indictment. This makes for some rather distracting disorganization and some truly annoying repetition. Worse, he periodically himself gets distracted from the task at hand. I thoroughly enjoyed his attacks on the so-called Greatest Generation and on Gen-X, but in these sections of the book he's essentially defending the Boomers, rather than garroting them, which is what we'd prefer.

The other problem isn't so much structural, it's ideological. Queenan's thesis is that the Boomers started out well, but then sold out. He repeatedly gives them credit for "the Freedom Riders. Woodstock, Four Dead in Ohio, driving Nixon from office, Jon Voight in Midnight Cowboy", but then says that after that they became selfish, self-absorbed, and obsessed with their material well being. Which is all well and good, except that : Midnight Cowboy sucked; as he himself says, the Boomers as they exist in our minds are the sons and daughters of the Post-WWII white middle class, and as such weren't a significant part of the Civil Rights movement; Woodstock was the epitome of the generation's irresponsible self-indulgence which was then conflated into some kind of meaningful statement of peace, love, and brotherhood; and both driving Nixon from office and getting gunned down at Kent State were fundamentally related to their desire to avoid service in Vietnam, which, though Queenan largely avoids the topic, is the primary crime they have to answer for. Basically, he's completely wrong about whether his generation was ever worthwhile, and this too seems a function of his natural inclination to defend his own : the Boomers didn't decline over time, they began badly.

Oddly enough, the best moments in the book come when Queenan is making serious points, rather than comic ones. At one point, when discussing the total farce that Boomers have turned funerals into, with songs, multiple insipid eulogies, and readings from inane fare like the Tibetan Book of the Dead, he says that :

Because we Baby Boomers believe in nothing, we end up acting like we believe in everything.

Elsewhere, while visiting a dying friend, Queenan is approached by a woman he doesn't know who clearly wants to hug him, but avoids her :

    After an awkward silence, she spoke : 'It's a shame that men have so much trouble showing their
    emotions,' she whispered. It was classic Baby Boomer feminism. What she meant was : 'You
    probably have the same feelings that I do, but you can't possibly show them, because that would
    necessitate revealing your feminine side, which this hideously repressive society prohibits you from
    doing.' It was also classic Baby Boomer behavior in that it capitalized on an inappropriate,
    emotionally devastating moment to launch a skirmish in the ongoing gender wars.

    'Actually, I have no trouble showing my emotions,' I told her. 'These are my emotions. I'm sad
    that my friend is dying, and that's why I look so sad. If my friend wasn't dying, I would probably
    be smiling and look a lot happier. I think a lot of men work this way.'

'Have a nice life,' she replied.

Ditto.

Even here though, when he's truly nailed what's most wrong with the Baby Boomers, he fails to develop these observations into a unified and coherent brief against them, because his objections seem to be mostly stylistic, rather than moral. He seems more concerned with how cheesy the funerals are and how silly the hugging is, than with the underlying causes of these behaviors. But the Baby Boomers aren't evil because they are gauche or tacky or melodramatic; they're evil because they don't believe in anything but themselves and as Queenan says when discussing Bill Clinton's capacity to show empathy without ever actually sharing a feeling, "...they don't actually care what other people do as long as they say the right things...."

There is an essential hollowness at the core of this generation. The fact that they have no beliefs, the way they display emotion without feeling it, the way they tried to turn simple draft avoidance into a great crusade, the way they have warped social standards to indulge their behaviors, ...all of these these things should be piled one on top of another by the prosecution as it makes its case that they are the most destructive generation in history. But Queenan, notorious for his scorched earth style and willingness to take no prisoners, backs off, and the book suffers because of it.

It's too bad, because there's much here that's funny and wickedly observant, and with a stronger editor to keep him on track, the book might have been great. As is, it's fun, but somewhat disappointing.

(Reviewed:13-May-01)

Grade: (B-)

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Balsamic Dreams : A Short But Self-important History of the Baby Boomer Generation (2001)

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