January 30, 2010

Generation gap

Until recently, I still thought we were the new wave. The new kids on the block. The new sh#t. And then I was exposed to the real new wave. The real new sh#t. It was a systematic exposure, too.
The first thing I noticed was that reading is becoming less and less popular. I know that's probably what older generations used to say about us but really, these kids don't read, and they don't read in a way that's completely different from our not reading.
They also have a weird way of writing. I sometimes feel very, very demode when chatting with them and I find it safer to stick to emoticons.
They glitter, sparkle and shine and many of them still can't tell the difference between "biography" and "bibliography".
They use a color-coded edition of Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury, as it is the only way to put some order in those narrative sequences.
They think it's ok to go through life thinking that Ezra Pound is a poem written by W.C. Williams.
Now I don't normally have a problem with people in their twenties who don't read Faulkner or who have never heard of Pound. I find it somehow annoying in this particular case because they're about to graduate from Philology this summer.

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