RE: a sense of proportion
PODESTA,Lesley (Lesley.PODESTA@deetya.gov.au)
Tue, 14 Jul 1998 17:07:08 +1000
Camille said:
> Scottie will you PLEASE stop attempting to filter my every utterance
> through the fact that I am Australian !?! I felt compelled not even to
> finish reading this post as I am so sick of this facile approach. I
> would
> have thought someone in your profession wouldn't have stooped to this
> low
> humour (if it is intended to be humour) ):
Camille, I gather that Mr Bowman is part of the helping professions.
Most of them seem to have a very strange sense of humour.
Camille then said:
> But the reason I do think TCIR is so timeless
> (and notice we always term books of this special transcendence are
> always
> described as `Timeless') is because eveyone recognises the struggle
> from
> adolescence to adulthood, regardless of whether or not they live in
> New
> York or know how `Smoke Gets in Your Eyes' goes.
>
But it is here that I disagree. The "adolescence identity struggle" is
not recognised by everyone at all. It seems to me to be a particular
mostly recent obsession of those of us in the western world. (And one
that I share, I wrote my darn thesis on it.) But it is, after all a
fairly manufactured transition, mostly based on sexual repression and
fully exploited by those folk who needed to create a new market, namely
the teenage market. And if you want to get a shock and understand just
how really recent the "adolescent crisis" really is, try talking to your
great grandmother (if she's alive). My research was a complete mystery
to my darling gran. Becoming a teenager meant nothing to her or most of
her generation - she was more concerned with personal ethics and
morality, personal survival and keeping her family fed and alive in her
years from 14 to 25.
All I'm trying to say is that TCIR reads well to us because of of who we
are, where we are and when we are. And its not timeless but it does have
some lovely writing and amusing insights.
Lesley
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