Gen X memoir brings bohemia in from the fringe
BY DAVID DALEY
Hartford Courant 

BROOKLYN, N.Y.

WHO WANTS to be a bohemian?
Just as Gen X has become Gen Ex -- and those
first squeezed by the baby boomers have been marginalized 
again by the boomers' babies -- along comes Ann Powers' memoir,
``Weird Like Us: My Bohemian America'' (Simon & Schuster, $23).

Powers, a pop-music critic for the New York Times, 
argues that the wary, media-savvy Gen X-ers, who 
would never identify themselves as bohemians, have
actually helped bring the fringes into the mainstream.

Powers points to writers such as David Foster Wallace;
comedians Chris Rock and Janeane Garofalo; filmmakers 
Todd Haynes, Todd Solondz and Kevin Smith; and musicians 
Tori Amos, Beck, the Beastie Boys and Yo La Tengo as 
examples of artists who have not only made a living by 
doing what they love, but also pushed stylistic boundaries
in the process.

``This was the great renaissance year for films, the
best since the 1970s,'' Powers said, referring to 1999
breakthroughs such as ``Being John Malkovich,'' ``Magnolia,'' 
``Boys Don't Cry,'' ``Three Kings'' and ``South Park: Bigger,
 Longer and Uncut.''

``Almost everyone who made one of those great films -- 
Spike Jonze, David Russell, Kevin Smith, the South Park 
guys, Paul (Thomas) Anderson -- is someone of the
generation I'm writing about, and that sensibility is there. 
That post-punk, '80s and '90s bohemia is totally running the
film industry, as far as art films go.''

Powers, 36, finds bohemia everywhere, even as the alternative
media continue their path toward irrelevance; the Village Voice 
gets purchased by an investment company; America Online and
Time Warner merge with hopes of dominating the Internet; and
Starbucks, the Gap and Barnes & Noble continue their inexorable
malling of America.

Writers like Tom Frank, who edits The Baffler, see no room for 
alternative in a culture that immediately makes all that is cool into
something that can be sold. Powers instead chooses to see the
latte cup as half full.

Even in private life, Powers suggests, the Gen-X sensibility has
begun to transform traditional definitions: of family, work, love 
and consumerism.

She extols the idea of ``chosen families'' and group houses, of
friends who create their own families after their own parents' 
divorces taught them that the suburban ideal was a dangerous 
illusion. She applauds the cultured slacker proletariat who work
as record- and video-store clerks and sometimes cough forth a
Quentin Tarantino. She lauds the collector-geek chic and thrifters
who have turned their styles into obsessions and even into
entrepreneurial careers as trend-setting designers or shop 
owners.

``My bohemia, and I say `my' bohemia because I think there's more 
than one, has a real fascination with sifting through pop-culture
history,'' Powers said. ``The style tends to be thrift-store vintage,
remaking history. . . . Finding gems in the junk pile is a big theme 
of bohemian life, whether it's through collecting weird objects, 
wearing certain clothes, or enjoying different activities.

``I've always felt frustrated that there wasn't more of an effort
from the cultural left to respond to people like William Bennett 
or the Christian Coalition, and conceive of how we live as a
thoughtful, thought-out way of life that has parallels in terms of
the idea of family values, work and all those things,'' she said. 
``Family, community and religion set forth paths most people
just follow. Even conscious drug use and sexual adventurism
I'd like people to see these as choices, not problems.

``The culture has changed step by step, from individual people 
deciding to do things a different way. That's how things like our
values about sex change,'' she said.

``How has it come to pass where we're now living in an age 
where women feel they can have sexual pleasure? It's come
to pass because of various social movements that started in
this locus of bohemia. It takes the notion of bohemia to allow 
for people to feel they can make those changes. It takes the
courage to be weird to change convention.''

http://www.sjmercury.com/premium/svlife/docs/weirdlike28.htm

Published Tuesday, March 28, 2000, in the San Jose Mercury News.