So What Next?

No, this isn't about the election--mostly, anyway

I’m not quite the archetypal “Nineties Kid.” I was born in 1990, and my memory starts no later than 1993, so I guess I remember most of the decade. But the Nineties Kid epithet developed in the early 2010s as a way of meme-ifying the nostalgia of a slightly older group of Millennials, the ones who were adolescents in the era of Boy Meets World. I saw that show, but much of it went over my eight-year-old head. My friend and I repeatedly got in trouble for watching because her mom considered it too sexual for elementary schoolers.

But for all that, I’m very much a product of the Nineties, in a much less mediated sense. I grew up in what I call, with intentional pretension (but, I’d argue, useful precision), the “provinicial intelligentsia.” In 1996, my family moved from (near) Ann Arbor, where I was born, to Laramie, Wyoming. My mom was following the traditional arc from underpaid adjunct to tenure-track professor, and she got an offer from the University of Wyoming. This was a time of expansion for MFAs in creative writing; it turned out to be probably the best time before or since or probably ever to be looking for a tenure-track job in the field. I lived in Laramie from first grade through the end of high school (Go Plainsmen!), and now I live there once again.

We used to have a proper country

Someday, I’ll go deeper into exactly how my family fits into a broader sociological schema, but here’s the main thing: My anchoring to a particular setting in a particular decade was less about my parents than about all the people they introduced into my life. A lot of writers, of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry, many though not all of whom were in the academy. Quite a few artists and academics in other fields. Grownups who were cultured in the way of the provinces before ubiquitous Internet, when it was a big deal to find a copy of La Femme Nikita at the local Blockbuster.

What did these people tend to have in common, aside from cultural and physical proximity to a public land-grant university? They all believed there was a deal to be struck. Their understanding of their own careers was that, if they did things a certain way, then various institutions, a set of peers, and society at large would hold up their end of the bargain. If you did the work, and listened to your mentors and colleagues, and deferred to the institutions when it mattered, you would get something in return. A square deal for artists and intellectuals; a promotion to associate professor or a mid-list publication contract in every pot.

You don’t need me to tell you that it no longer works like this. Not just for artists and academics; the same goes most famously for journalists and anyone in media, and we can presume it’s gotten worse in all “passion” fields, from fashion to video game development to the less-mercenary forms of scientific research. Even the sunniest people who try to Follow Their Passions increasingly struggle to avoid the sense that they’re punished for doing so. When I first started working for a small startup after my MFA, it quickly became clear that almost everyone else working there would have become an academic if they’d been born a few decades earlier. As it was, we were all just being realistic.

So what happened? There’s a larger story to be told here about capitalism itself, but I also think there are a few specific problems that plague the cohort I’ve described above. For one thing, nowhere that could plausibly be called a “cultural center” is affordable for bohemian-ish living—this goes not only for New York and San Francisco, but also for Nashville and Missoula and Eugene. There’s also been a willful depressing of pay in most creative and intellectual fields, even for those who can find steady work (and there’s ever less of that, of course). A professor I know recently noted that a tenure-track opening in their department had been posted for the exact same salary range they were offering twenty years ago, not adjusted for inflation. This is what happens when the people who determine the pay come to understand there’s an infinite reserve army of would-be artists and intellectuals who can and will do the work.

I’ll write about all of this at greater length one day, because it’s useful to think through what in fact did happen, and what we might do about it. But I do know one thing beyond doubt: We cannot go on as if nothing has changed.

What I mean by this is, in one sense, very simple: It’s not the Nineties, and we can’t pretend that it is. We can’t pretend there’s necessarily a deal to be made. You can be very good at what you do and reap exactly zero rewards for it. I know a tragically large number of people in my generation who can testify to this. If you’re fortunate, someone whose opinion has weight might at least tell you that you’re doing solid work. But you might not even get that. You might just do what you do and nothing will happen except that you keep doing it—or not.

I don’t think this is a good state of affairs. I like the idea of square dealing as much as the next Middle American. But the only thing worse than living in a situation that’s gone from suboptimal to sadistic is to add to your woes by deluding yourself. Just face up to the facts. There may not be a deal to be made, but that doesn’t mean you lack agency. Figure out what you’re going to do, and get to work. A better world is possible.

You could say a lot of the above also applies to politics, but you didn’t hear it from me.

Calvin and Hobbes Corner

Boy, you look tired:

Since I was already talking about my childhood above, I’ll admit it: During my school years, I was more of a Susie Derkins than a Calvin. I was conscientious, sensitive, and a scrupulously good student. That I didn’t want to admit this at the time, and of course related more to Calvin, speaks in part to how much it can suck to be a helplessly serious kid.

I’ve noted before that, in my headcanon, Susie grew up to go to various achiever institutions and to become the House representative for Calvin’s district. This still seems about right. One hopes dear Susie, who would absolutely be a Democrat, kept her seat this time around.

I’ve always thought it was funny that Calvin’s elementary school—my man is in the first grade—has lockers, and that Watterson does teen sitcom-style scenes like this in the hallways. If anyone went to an elementary school that used this setup for kids this young, please say so in the comments. Here it seems to be yet another conceit to make Calvin seem at least a little bit older than he is.

A poem

Matt Daly is elk hunting.