Now We Are 40

Now We Are 40
Tiffanie Darke

What happened to Generation X? Millenials dominate our Facebook feeds and people bang on about the baby boomers – but what about us? The lost generation, the middle youth, the middle child of today. Are we still cool?

Generation X? Remember them? The kids who believed they'd never grow up. The generation Douglas Coupland immortalised in his novel of the same name. The wry, knowing navel-gazers obsessed with cool and being cool who today are sandwiched between the boomers of the 60s and the millennials.

Gen X'ers came of age against a backdrop of Britpop and the Spice Girls, Tarantino and Pulp Fiction, Madchester and the Stone Roses, acid house and rave, super clubs, Ministry and Cream. They holidayed in Ibiza high on hooch and E and never ever believed there'd be a comedown.

So whatever happened to them?

We turned 40. And as Tiffanie Darke points out in this witty exploration of the generation who defied generalisation, we're not handling it all that well

Where once we wore floaty skirts and Doc Martins, now we’re sporting Scandi fashion and 'interesting' trainers. We still party in Ibiza but now bodyboard in Cornwall. Where once mixtapes were the ultimate mating call, now we take selfies and swap Spotify playlists all the while conspicuously wearing large Dr Beats headphones and casually leaving old packets of Kingsize Rizla lying round our open plan kitchens.

More to the point, Gen X are now in charge. In government, in business and the creative industries. The most anti-establishment of generations has now become the establishment. But as tech overtakes the arts as society's great shaping force, Tiffanie ponders does cool and its pursuit still matter? If Gen X had it sorted, gave us Barack Obama and downward facing dogs, why is stress the new flu? Why are we working not for love anymore or cool but to avoid negative equity and depleting pension pots?

In Now We Are 40, Tiffanie interviews some of the most iconic Gen X’ers such as Pearl Lowe, Richard Reed and Blur’s bassist Alex James to look at how Gen X live their life in between being young and old, and how it feels to want to burn down the establishment only to realise that now you are the establishment.

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Copyright (#u83ea2665-dfc5-55b9-b89d-a5b454d29081)

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First published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2017

FIRST EDITION

© Tiffanie Darke 2017

Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2017

Cover illustration © Noma Bar

Tiffanie Darke asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

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Source ISBN: 9780008185329

Ebook edition: February 2017 ISBN: 9780008185343

Version: 2017-02-07

Epigraph (#u83ea2665-dfc5-55b9-b89d-a5b454d29081)

The carapace of coolness is too much for Claire, also. She breaks the silence by saying that it’s not healthy to live life as a succession of isolated little cool moments. ‘Either our lives become stories, or there’s just no way to get through them.’

Douglas Coupland, Generation X

Contents

Cover (#u1cac3145-6622-5ac1-8680-2e26a7f2e874)

Title Page (#udacc11ae-3b0e-58f8-a84a-c21b0bc5eba2)

Copyright (#u3efb1ee1-9b0e-57b3-ae5f-e61adb7de9bb)

Epigraph (#uf9be8ccd-1e01-59f7-af43-9d4d5f33a546)

Going Up, Going Down (#uf8ad87a5-11cd-5c2d-b130-8fb12bba86b9)

Introduction: Don’t Grow Up – It’s a Trick (#ufc63a28f-1c98-5ffa-9262-26eba35b9438)

1 I Was Eight in the Eighties (#u9d55d2ae-7146-51e2-adf6-7aaf97c2d596)

2 Four Go to Ibiza (#u7cce07ef-0076-5c01-b7ad-1008b7e59388)

3 Just Be Good to Me: How Business Became Sexy (#u3d888635-3bfd-5c63-a123-a149167e23b1)

4 When Noel Gallagher Went to Number 10 (#ua87fa3e0-178a-5d6e-8414-6ed936175a95)

5 Clinton’s Cigar (#uecbdc264-a002-570e-ad6b-6b5f6c2ec5c3)

6 Let’s Get Digital (#litres_trial_promo)

7 Three Lions (#litres_trial_promo)

8 Sex: The Consequences (#litres_trial_promo)

9 Meet You in the Gastropub (#litres_trial_promo)

10 Never Complain, Never Explain (#litres_trial_promo)

11 Namaste (#litres_trial_promo)

12 Alexander Is Dead, Long Live McQueen (#litres_trial_promo)