If you imagine you received everything you ever wanted, you can be assured of one thing: you would not be happy. In fact, you would be in hell.
Remember the time you got so angry you wanted someone to die? Or perhaps you just wanted to hit them, or hurt them somehow? How about all those times you are driving or waiting in line, and feel so impatient you just want to scream profanities? Maybe you have suffered so much you hit points where you thought, “I don’t want to exist anymore.” Each of us can think of our own examples. It just takes a dose of honesty and we can rest assured, we will still be forgetting a lot.
If you really got everything you wanted, you would find out your desires destroyed you. You would have screamed those profanities. Then what? You would have said that horrible thing to the person you love, and watched in their face a flicker of love and trust that your words snuffed out, forever. Maybe, God forbid, your hand would have flown out to its target of enraged desire, and you would look at the bruised face of … who? Can we face ourselves enough to answer?
But as a statement about generational experiences, Alter was basically right. If you were born around 1980, you grew up in a space happily between — between eras of existential threat (Cold War/War on Terror, or Cold War/climate change), between foreign policy debacles (Vietnam/Iraq), between epidemics (crack and AIDS/opioids and suicide), and between two different periods of economic stagnation (the ’70s and early Aughts). If you were born later, you experienced slow growth followed by financial crisis followed by a recovery that’s only lately returned us to the median-income and unemployment stats of … 1999.
Dalí envisioned a huge Hollywood production for Giraffes on Horseback Salad, complete with music by Cole Porter. While the project never did get the green light, there is a now a soundtrack to go along with the graphic novel — including music, complete with a faux Groucho. And so just maybe, up in some dreamy surrealist heaven, the real Groucho — along with Harpo, Chico and Salvador Dalí — is smiling down.
As Antoine wisely puts it: “Self-righteousness is deeply satisfying – and cheap. How many of us can be sure that we wouldn’t have tried to find a way to manage in the war?” The irresolvable mystery of this story, in common with all great fiction, is the human heart.
Much more than a whodunnit, this is a rich evocation of British history, a thoughtful, character-led story told by an accomplished writer whose richly rewarding narrative immerses the reader in an uncomfortable world.
While finding yourself in literature may sometimes be painful, it remains necessary and vital. Representation, these writers show us, can both highlight shared histories and inspire a new generation.
I was made from Hawaiian Punch ice cubes
chicken breasts & cauliflower ear Sir Newton’s
Law of Motion drilling double leg takedowns