Daniel Robert Epstein: Marty Beckerman

I'm adding a comment just to see if the "Comments: -1" thing on the front page goes away.

Oh yeah, and this kid is a moron. -nod-

[Edit: Still -1 comments. Nooooooooo!] =)

[Edited on Mar 15, 2004 by faded]

Yeah, this did nothing to ease my impression of him as an idiot.

I'm tired of people subsituting just being an asshole who says things to bother people with having actual insight.

Dude, you are the same age as I am... do we honestly have the tools or understanding to make that kind of assumption about his insight?

I haven't read his books but I'm not about to profess that I have anywhere near the perspective to comment on his generation.

I enjoy his style quite a bit, it's like the most absurd over-exaggerated tennage fantasy put into words.

Oh, and the STOP MARTY BECKERMAN site is fucking hilarious.

I love websites like that. I want to keep a printed scrap book of them, so that I can walk over to my book shelf, open it up, and wallow in hilarity until I explode.

Well, it's a larger issue for me. I can't comment on my generation. I think the notion of generational politics has always been dicey, even in generations such as the "Greatest Generation" or the Baby Boomers who had WWII and Vietnam, respectively, as unifying, common events for them all. Now as we get into generations that lack that common event, it gets harder and harder. I remember when I was about the same age as Beckerman being pissed off by the book "Generation X", and I can't imagine this book is any more accurate about that generation.

Besides, Beckerman's on relatively good behavior in this interview. See a previous one he did for Salon to see the asshole-osity this guy is fully capable of.

I love how every ten years or so some almost teenager writes a book or highly publicized article about how their generation is “the most” something or other, usually describing apathy in a new and clever way. It’s almost as if no one sees any value in anything that’s happened in the world since WW2. I suppose if you go to enough parties just to get laid, that’s what you assume the rest of the world is about. Jesus, I hated bubbleheaded crap like this when I was 20 and now that I’ve left 30 in the dust it just makes me want to claw my eyes out. I’ll bet in 20 years Beckerman will look back and just feel embarrassed.

homeboy needs a t-shirt

<i>Oh, and the STOP MARTY BECKERMAN site is fucking hilarious.</i>

I found it less funny and more sad, since it's his website and all. I think if you have to generate a website decrying yourself, then it probably means nobody's listening.

Oh, and also, if you <i>are</i> going to do that, don't use your own name in the whois information.

I meant to post my last thread as a reply, oops. Oh well. You *do* realize it's his site, right? It's sort of like Landover Baptist, except not nearly as funny.

I had the same first though. Interesting that he used the same name, but a different contact address. Still, lame.

Also, this picture on his website is like 10 miles from where I live. That cross is freakin' huge.

He is a tool, check my journal for the twelve stop progam for toolhood.
anyway, i don't get it, he is into Thomson's writing so much that he emulates it but i think he failed to learn the lessons. I would have brought him alot more weed and would have gotten the both of us so stoned i would have never handed in the interview, but probably would have written about later. He might prove himself right with his own personal thesis. I never read his shit, and it might be wrong, be he just looks like a dusche bag. I mean check out his web page, his picture looks like its from a k mart catalog, up in the left hand corner.

Just from reading the interview and checking his site, I must disagree. Call me misinformed, a moron, or a combination thereof at your behest.

Being 20, I have looked back at the fact that his comment about 16 being a target age is correct, and I completly agree with his assumption that "Generation SLUT" has no idols. He seems to have a fair idea of what things looks like, and you all fail to realize that he openly admits that his book is based off assumption from his point of view. I think HST did well in praising him (in a manner), and I applaud his efforts.

But then, I am just a loser anyways. Like too many other "over-the-hill-at-20" kinda guys... I think I actually kinda relate to this "tool".

Say what you will about Marty Beckerman, and it seems like a lot of you out there either don't care enough to read his work or maybe don't understand at all what he's trying to get out his readers, but I just think you all have missed the point of what he's doing. A lot of these kids don't care, they're totally devoid of human feelings and emotions. Maybe you don't care, or maybe you are opne of them, but not recognizing that is like a parent turning thier back to a child's drug problem, the differance being that this is national, and most, not all, but most of these kids are just shells going through motions. I have worked where i hear these kids talk and see some of thier actions, and it's all empty. People protesting for no reason other than to be social and see girls. I'm scared shitless that by the time i'm 60 that people will be eliminated if they don't fit into some specific group where your dress and interaction and actions are sanctioned and monitered. You might think i'm just parinoid, maybe i am, but what if i'm not? Anyways, as a long time reader of Marty Beckerman, I can't stand all this bullshit people are slinging twords him. People can say whatever they want about him, but i wish there were more of him instead of the brainless shits buying whatever is trendy for the simple reason that they want to be cool to some mystery person who is a figment of thier collective imaginations. I'm sure any of those 20 year olds would not spark such emotion with thier writing...sans perhaps making you want to throw up from how trite and incoherent it is.

I'm inclined to agree with the last two comments. Much though I am relatively unfamiliar with Mr. Beckerman's work, I do share his general sentiments regarding my generation. And true may it be, as the_plebe pointed out, that he might just be my generation's answer to Douglas Coupland, and it might also be that he's deliberately exaggerating the extent of this shallow sexuality that has emerged as the dominant theme of our pop culture in an attempt to sell books, he does have many valid points that are far too seldom adressed. I do enjoy the fact that the people who immediately dismiss him as just another bubblehead, being contraversial for the sake of it, are often gen-Xers who have even less insight then the man they would attack.

Funniest Marty Beckerman article in the local paper was when he took a prostitute (there are about half a dozen brothels behind his old high school) to his senior prom. He wrote an article about that, the paper fucking ran it, even though that probably wasn't what the paper's editors had in mind when they started the teen-perspective section. He deserves props just for that.

Haven't read his book, not remotely interested in it.

But that doesn't matter because Beckerman is actually funny. That is important. Sure, his is a stupid "voice of his generation" book. Sure, he has nothing to actually say. But he's funny, and that counts for a lot. Even if he has to get it through shock like Howard Stern.

[Edited on Mar 29, 2004 by stockula1]

[Edited on Mar 29, 2004 by stockula1]