Tell me a story about a midcentury small town American boy coming-of-age.
\n\n"}\n\n\n\nNo | rather not | I dunno | I guess | Sure | Yes | FUCK yes | Oh god you don\u2019t even know
A good one would be a lot more evocative of a \u201cweird and ironic and melancholy\u201d American experience than this, but I\u2019m having a hard time coming up with one that doesn\u2019t sound entirely generic and Protestant.
Someone\u2019s reading a bedtime book and straining to hear the notes through the giggles, and someone else is breaking out in hives and coughing and runs to the bathroom. A man, too feverish even for fever, stands up abruptly and goes downstairs to the bar for whiskey. He orders another beer but seems to have lost all feeling in his right arm and has to lean on another customer for support. He proceeds to spin in circles on the table, moaning pitifully, and someone brings him a steaming cup of coffee, which he drinks in one gulp.
That sounds something like the at-the-time \u201850s literature of alienation and anomie, but I\u2019m looking for more of a Reaganite \u201880s take on the ‘50s, after the boomers grew up and looked back with rose-colored glasses
I can\u2019t think of any books on this theme that I\u2019d consider \u201cgood\u201d on their own, so I don\u2019t know if I understand your point. (I mean, the Reaganite \u201cwe were feeling alienated from the adults, so I decided to go on a journey of self-discovery that led to me becoming a hippie and then a drug addict\u201d narrative was not a new or original thing, I just don\u2019t have the reference?)