The Half-King

hosts a no-holds-barred

GENERATION SMACKDOWN

Are Millennials a coddled,
entitled horde of
"High School Musical"-loving
lightweights?

FIND OUT
Monday, April 21 at 7PM

Hecklers welcome, and are in fact encouraged to
hoot in derision at any and all references to "Abbey Road."

The last time we heard a lot about Generation X, it was the early ‘90s. Xers were overeducated and unemployed. Flipping conventional wisdom on its head, X Saves the World revisits the glory years of the “slackers” who were born between 1960 and 1977—and takes a sharp look at the culture they’ve created in spite of (or maybe because of) their ongoing marginalization. Stuck in between the gluttonous Boomers and the money-and-fame-besotted Millennials (the generation that gave us Paris Hilton), Xers have grown used to letting other people hog the spotlight. But as Gordinier shows us—with portraits of Xers who have been responsible for paradigm-shifting work in the realms of film, music, philanthropy, social networking, poetry, and technology—Xers have created many of the best things about the world we live in. And, as Gordinier suggests, Xers are poised right now to rescue our rotten culture from the worst things—by rising up and claiming their unique place in the national conversation.

If you’re a Boomer (or G*d help you, a Millennial), this book might teach you a few things about the importance of the generation that’s sandwiched between you and your kin. After all, we have Generation X to thank for Pulp Fiction and Lost in Translation and Being John Malkovich, for YouTube and Google and Pandora and Meetup and parenting blogs, for brilliant satire like The Onion and The Colbert Report. At a time when it occasionally seems as though the entire world is selling out for cheap fame and free Botox shots, it is Gen X—as ornery and elusive as ever—that reminds us that there is still room in America for innovation, activism, and soul.

“I loved this book . . . it’s impassioned, very quick on its feet, dense with all the right allusions, funny,
and in the end actually very moving.” —Nick Hornby, The Believer

Jeff Gordinier is Editor-at-Large at Details magazine. He has also written for Esquire, GQ, Fortune, Elle, Spin, Entertainment Weekly, PoetryFoundation.org, and the Los Angeles Times. In 2006 he won the ASCAP Deems Taylor Award for two music stories in Details, and in 2007 he landed a second ASCAP prize in special recognition of another piece from the magazine. His work has been published in anthologies such as Best American Nonrequired Reading 2005, Best Food Writing 2006, and Best Creative Nonfiction Vol. 1. He lives with his wife and two children in the suburbs north of New York City.

Kate Torgovnick left Jane magazine in 2006 to research and write Cheer!. She also began a career as a freelance writer, writing regularly for The New York Times and Page Six Magazine. Her articles have also appeared in Newsweek, The International Herald Tribune, The New York Observer, The Village Voice, The New York Daily News, Metro, Radar, Good Housekeeping, ReadyMade and British Glamour. Kate is currently the editor-at-large at Dame magazine, where she writes features and covers entertainment and pop culture.

Tom Sinclair is a native New Yorker, a bona fide Boomer (born 1956!), and a former senior writer for Entertainment Weekly, where he was on staff from 1996-2006. He has contributed to numerous publications, including Spin, Vibe, The New York Times, Rolling Stone, Village Voice, New York Newsday, and People. He is also the author of the children's fantasy novel Tales of a Wandering Warthog (Albert Whitman & Co., 1985).

This event is free and open to the public