The coming month sees the release of two quite different but connected books. Douglas Coupland's Generation A is set in a world without bees and said to "explore new ways of story-telling in a digital world", a description that could be applied to Tao Lin's Shoplifting In American Apparel, whose fragmented approach seems to reflects a new strain of hyper-existentialism where thrills come only from bouts of pointless shoplifting.
Generation A is also said to "reflect" Generation X, Coupland's novel which documented a relatively unremarkable set of young Americans holding down McJobs while facing an uncertain future armed only with the weapons of sarcasm and apathy. It was one of those rare books that pinned a demographic down onto the page just as it was emerging – that of a generation who would rather work to live than live to work. Or, in fact, get stoned, eat ice cream and not work at all. So successful was Coupland's book that the mainstream media and advertising world jumped on Generation X and milked it dry quicker than you can say "Kurt Cobain".
That was nearly two decades ago, however, and in the interim we've seen the emergence of the internet and a generation of young bloggers using the medium to tout their wares, aggressively network with one another and give an insight into the thoughts of today's young, literate America.
One the blogosphere's leading lights is Tao Lin, a young writer seen as something like the figurehead of young, internet-spawned American fiction. He has accrued a number of acolytes, followers and copyists who could collectively be branded the children of Generation X. Or if we're being harsh, the offspring of the characters Bret Easton Ellis identified back in the mid 80s in Less Than Zero.
New York-based Lin has made a name for himself via four previous books, prolific blogging activity and some quite masterful acts of self-publicity, including selling shares on future royalties – a shrewd stroke that earned him $12,000. But his writing isn't for everyone. If Ellis and Coupland's late 80s/early 90s characters seemed aloof and bored, then the writing of Lin and associates such as Brandon Scott Gorrell, Kendra Grant Malone, Ellen Kennedy and Zachary German is positively dripping in irony and shot through with the type of cynicism that relies on the heavy use of speech marks in order to detach "themselves" from their "work". And though their web and print presence suggests confidence, the content of their stories displays uncertainty and a meandering preoccupation with the minutiae of everyday urban living: food, drink, fleeting but unfulfilled connections and a general sense of seen-it-all weariness that's a tad depressing for writers all still the right side of 30. It is as if being a "writer" and maintaining a blog is enough.
Maybe it is. Maybe this is the real voice of young, blog-happy America – the children of Generation X: sarcastic, bored and a bit spoilt, but nevertheless great at selling the idea of being "sarcastic, bored and bit spoilt" by publishing and publicising each other's work on websites such as Lamination Colony, Bear Parade, Tao Lin's own Muumuu House imprint and dozens of others. Media-savvy, basically.
All that's really lacking is name for this new wave of writers who, in publishing their shopping lists, Gmail chats, chapbooks and poems about vegan food, come across as a literary extension of Vice magazine and have gained a small army of readers as a result. I'd be inclined to call it Generation Yawn on account of the dangerously high levels of ennui on display, Generation Zzz, Generation Tweet or perhaps more appropriately, Generation :(
Either way it all suggests either a highly exciting time or the impending demise of modern American literature as we know it, depending upon where you stand or possibly how old you are. A generation gets the culture it deserves, and it'll be interesting to see which blogging generation writers can make the leap from screen to page – and stay the distance.
