The Great American Slumber Party

There’s a thing I’ve been thinking about on and off for a few years and this is it: how is it that contemporary fiction, post modern fiction (what-you-will) is somehow associated almost exclusively with a small coterie of young(ish), white guys? Eggers, Franzen, Foster Wallace, Euginedes, Lethem, even the newer ones like Kunkel. Go back a bit further: Bret Easton Ellis, Jay McInerny, DeLillo, my latest flame The Pynch. Ok, now keep going (and yes we’re moving away from Post modernism here but go with me) Roth, Bellow, Updike, Mailer. In this list the closest thing we get to “not white” is Jewish. The closest thing we get to “not guys” is Euginedes channelling a hermaphrodite (female body, male identity) in Middlesex. So, what gives? I’m not complaining exactly, I’m just trying to work out where being a “dude” fits in with the whole “postmodernism thing.”

[Side note: I’m curious to know where I fit into all this. Don’t I disprove my own theory? I’m a girl. I like postmodern, clever, show-offy stuff. Aah, yes, but, dollars to donuts I don’t like it for the same reasons many dudes do. And sorry guys, but for some reason when I think about this you’re all “Dudes” – is it the pernicious influence of Lebowski? Likely, and certainly the “dudeness” of The Dude in that film is the result of some uber-white-guy cool that so many of these novelist and their male fans aspire to, surely.]

And so, while scratching my head and browsing the stacks I happened to stumble across this on Salon today. [http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2007/11/07/teen_girls/]

This, I thought, is an eye opener. Enough of the white guys/dudes. What if teenage girls were to constitute the new literary zeitgeist? Now, THAT would be SOMETHING. It sorta makes some kinda sense too given that we’re all living in a Facebook, MySpace, virtura-land where we mediate ourselves down to the last detail in order to most faithfully project the simulacra image that is our true self-i(sh)-ness. Teen girls are experts in this field. Their self obsession is no different to that practiced by the newer (or the older) white guys mentioned above – perhaps just skewed a bit differently. Where the Dudes agonise about TV and indie music and technology and charity and ethics and international travel and proving that they’re worthy, these girls are trying to find ways to capture the experience of being young and female – itself an exercise in proving worthiness. Look! At! Me! I’m an outsider, a rebel, a sexpot…
Really, there’s much difference at all when you spell it out. And now here’s a compelling thought: Norman Mailer as the self absorbed debutante at the Super Sweet 16 party. Franzen as the hormonally charged girl on the dancefloor grinding her way to various ecstatic levels of gratification. Eggers as the deadpan ironist who refuses to join the swim team. It’s the Boys Club meets the Baby Sitters’ Club…

And what’s the deal with me and my inner teenager over the last few days?