|
It seems like every generation needs a catchy name, and the folks born in the 60s and 70s are no exception. To discover the origin of their moniker, we checked the Yahoo! Generation X category (under Society and Culture > Cultures and Groups). Right off the bat, we noticed a prominent link to a subcategory about author Douglas Coupland. Curious, we decided to begin our hunt there. We visited the official Douglas Coupland site and while it offered a lot of cool stuff -- essays, literary outtakes, film clips and even pieces of
collage -- there wasn't much background material on Coupland's work or the origin of the phrase "Generation X." Next, we perused some of the other sites listed in the Coupland and Gen X categories, but after several rounds of links, we still couldn't find any clues. That's when we changed tactics and searched, using the Boolean phrase "+'generation x' +definition." Happily, the results yielded a nice Gen X article from the University of Nevada, Reno that described the meaning of the phrase as well as its genesis. Yes, it turns out that author Coupland coined the title "Generation X" in his 1991 novel of the same name, but he got the idea from another writer, namely non-fiction author Paul Fussell. An
online FAQ on Generation X goes even farther, explaining the phrase's origin with a quote by, guess who, Douglas Coupland himself. He says, "The book's title came not from Billy Idol's band, as many supposed, but from the final chapter of a funny sociological book on American class structure titled 'Class,' by Paul Fussell. In his final chapter, Fussell named an 'X' category of people who wanted to hop off the merry-go-round of status, money and social climbing that so often frames modern existence." Finally, out of the blue, we remembered to check alt.culture, a modern cultural encyclopedia. Their detailed entry on Generation X
is well worth a look.
|
