Letters to the Editor
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Another publishing insider trying to seem deep to push her book.
Dudes, Megan Hustad is a former book editor who has worked at Random House, Basic Books, and the Counterpoint Press who is using this essay to promote her own self help book.
This is why the essay bugs me - the agenda is so obvious yet never admitted, which makes the whole thing rather disingenuous.
How many times can Salon publish cutesy essays about nothing by publishing industry types with rather uneventful cushy New York lives? Does Megan say anything which wasn't covered better by an episode of Seinfeld and Friends?
Her entire career relies on certain cultural boundaries and a certain type of insider privilege. That she doesn't mention this, or reflect upon it, in her essay is why it is so utterly weak.
There's a vast nation of young people ripping it up and writing about it. Hell, the Gawker writers have more insight and nuance.
The young publishing professional might have status anxiety about picking up a self-help book - less obsessed hipsters who don't live in New York, not so much.
Thus it is not "People who are out of touch with reality may not understand this article. But its core message speaks to more than just the myspace/facebook generation." It is people understand it all too well - the same game navel gazing by media elites in Salon, now spanning several generations. How nice of Joan Walsh to welcome the next wave.
Defining oneself by what one consumes is a condition which everyone experiences, and not just in this current era. And there is plenty of amusing things to be said about it.
But his essay attempt to conflates the personal and zeitgeist seems lazy and tries to look down on people at the same time.
It's similar to Camille Paglia, who promotes herself as an intellectual rebel for embracing topics traditionally beneath her while emphasizing how they remain beneath her.
"Of course one could say that the pretentious and literary like their dysfunction, and so their reluctance to pick up anything that's not them, even if it might help, shouldn't worry anyone." It might also be a smaller segment of prentenious and literary fully buy into this crap because they are making their careers from it.
"But there's also the possibility that over-identification with our preferred products weakens our political instincts." Including not being able to distinguish between the universal and one's own rarified social position.
I'm don't think authenticity is necessary all the time. But this essay seems phony. Plenty of great youth cultural angst is out there, but this ain't it.