Anthem for a Forgotten Generation
My Generation X Cover Story Is Out in Harper’s Now
Dear Readers, I’m sorry for the quick succession of Substack posts, but I am about to take a little break for travels, and just this morning my new essay in the September issue of Harper’s Magazine appeared in its online version. I wanted to share it with you.
The piece is, tonally and thematically, not unrelated to yesterday’s ‘stack: it is Sacramentophile, backward-looking, nostalgic, elegiac, and depressive — though I hope not intervention-level depressive. I expect in fact that its memories and mood and argument will be shared by many readers, especially from among my coevals, capable of conjuring more hopeful visions of the present and the future than I am.
This looks, also, like a fantastic Gen X-focused issue overall, with appearances not just from Justin E. H. Smith (my last ever, I expect, under this name), but from Zadie Smith and The Smiths as well. I hope you’ll enjoy it, and I hope it will motivate you to subscribe to Harper’s. If you enjoy it, and are eager to see more writing in this vein from me, I also hope you will consider subscribing to The Hinternet.
Enjoy the rest of your summer, and keep trying to love one another.
—JS-R
This is a wonderful essay Justin. I’m elder millennial, and as Mark Fisher (k-punk) wrote so elegantly about, we millennials came of age just as the neoliberal project had fully subsumed post-war youth movements. We came of age in the late 90s for its funeral.
I will tell you, as a millennial born 1985, that my generation is truly awful. I grew up in the shadow of Gen X, and always looked toward it as an aspiration, but I feel like my own generation was already well beyond. There were things I saw the older kids doing and wished to do when my turn came but none of my compatriots would follow. The most transgressive things they did was smoke weed while playing on their playstations. And it's not like I was in a dull group, even our jocks seemed to have a certain dullness that their older siblings didn't. Even the music festival were dull husks. I graduated High School in 2004, the top artist was Green Day and Eminem (Killers wouldn't break through our world for a year to come), and this after surviving Limp Bizkit. 1994, you had Zombie, Closer, Glycerine, I could go on. I really can't even communicate with my peers.
I really feel like it is fully possible that a certain vitality can bleed out of a world.