Bookish Thoughts: Millenial Fiction

 

I have a pile of books there is are very unlike me. In fact, some of these books I’m already expecting not get on with, so why do I own them?

You’re looking at one of my next reading projects. This summer, while reading the first chapter of At the Existentialist Cafe, I came across some quotes that made me pause.

“They asked big questions about what it means to live an authentic, fully human life, thrown into a world with many other humans also trying to live. They tackled questions about nuclear war, about how we occupy the environment, about violence, and about the difficulty of managing international relations in dangerous times.”

 

“They all wrote about anxiety and the experience of being overwhelmed by choice - a feeling that has become ever more intense in the relatively prosperous parts of the twenty-first-century world, even while real-world choices have shut down alarmingly for some of us. They worried about suffering, inequality and exploitation, and wondered whether anything could be done about these evils. As part of all these questions, they asked what individuals can do, and what they themselves had to offer.”

“… freedom has come into the spotlight again. We find ourselves surveilled and managed to an extraordinary degree, farmed for our personal data, fed consumer goods but discouraged from speaking our minds or doing anything too disruptive in the world, and regularly reminded that racial, sexual, religious and ideological conflict are not closed cases at all. Perhaps we are ready to talk about freedom again - and talking about it politically so means talking about it in our personal lives.”

Thus, enter millennial fiction. When I see people review books from these millennial authors, I’ve noticed this rise in existentialism again - whether it’s being acknowledged or not.  I really want to dive into this because I think it’s interesting. There are some contemporary authors/books that are not millennial that can be brought into this conversation as well (ducks, Newburyport, Milkman, Esther Kinsky’s novels River and Grove, and Rachel Cusk’s Outline trilogy come to mind). I don’t think this is purely a phenomenon amongst millennial fiction, as there does seem to be a trend in contemporary literature focusing on the minutiae of life and one’s tension with the outside world. I then want to bring this around full circle to the king of details and the seemingly mundane - Marcel Proust.

Here are some topics I’ll be exploring within the framework of existentialism as I work through this reading project:

• Capitalism/Marxism/Socialism - Sally Rooney especially. I actually plan to read her three novels and Mr. Salary, a short story, and really dive into how she portrays Marxism. She is blatantly a Marxist. I blatantly dislike Marx. I do find it ironic how the marketing of her books profits off capitalism. One can argue that it’s the system she has to work within, but there are ways around structures. I don’t think Rooney and I will get along, but I think including her in this discussion of existentialist thought amongst millennial writers is crucial. I plan to argue counter arguments to some of her points about Marxism, which means I’ll have to spend some more time reading Marx (gag me…) Also, critiquing capitalism is very common amongst millennials. Severance by Ling Ma presents an interesting dialogue about this idea of post-capitalist society.

• Ennui - This term is used to describe a feeling of listlessness and dissatisfaction; one’s life seems unexciting, uninteresting, mundane. In these novels, there tends to be a focus on the characters getting stuck in the “hamster wheel of life” and they have difficulty reconciling this. How can life seem so mundane, yet the world is imploding around us at the same time? I think we’ve all felt this, especially in 2020 and 2021. This is were I want to eventually draw some parallels between my findings and Proust. 

• Milieu - This is a nice sounding word to describe one’s environment/surroundings. As I’m working through these millennial novels, I hope to pick up on any commonalities between the environments and settings in which these stories take place, why these settings may or may not be similar and why these are the settings that these authors are gravitating towards. 

• Why are millennial writers currently getting praised for this? This s a question I hope to answer, because it find it odd that millennial writers are currently getting praised for this, as if they are the first ones to have these conversations. I’m a millennial, and I think every generation falls victim to this. We think we are super special and unique, yet humans since the dawn of time have critiqued the structures around them. And millennials are not the first ones to feel this existential crisis; this tension between ourselves and the world. My hypothesis is that now, as those in my generation that were born in the 1980s and 1990s are getting closer towards middle-age (yea..weird…), we are now at this time in our lives in which we are trying to come to terms with and reconcile how we perceived adulthood would be and how it’s actually playing out. Our predecessors have already had this crisis, and Gen Z is not quite there yet as they’re still teenagers. This is why I’ll be bring Kinsky, Burns, Cusk and Ellmann (potentially Knausgaard) into this discussion; to see how our predecessors address these issues.

These are the ramblings and thoughts that are floating around in my head as I gear up to start this reading project. Like most of my reading projects, this will probably take me a long time to complete - years. I plan to start next year. I think I can read Mr. Salary this year, as it’s only 30 pages long and I really need to finish reading At the Existentialist Cafe. 

What do you think about millennial fiction? Have you read any of these books? Are there any books you think I should consider adding to this project?

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