This Week in Literalism
Written byPosted on February 27, 2007
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CNN: “Today’s college students are more narcissistic and self-centered than their predecessors, according to a comprehensive new study by five psychologists who worry that the trend could be harmful to personal relationships and American society.”
Well, let’s examine this, shall we? I’m not sure if self-centered college kids are especially damaging to American society. After all, the minute they leave college, unless they’re sitting on a savings account, they’ll have to get jobs and the student loan collectors will be on their asses in about nine months demanding payment. Faced with these financial realities, egos have a tendency to plummet.
And here’s Professor Jean Twenge describing the culprit: “Current technology fuels the increase in narcissism. By its very name, MySpace encourages attention-seeking, as does YouTube.”
You know, by its very name, the United States of America proves to be a harmonious nation, devoid of racism, sexism, and classism. By its very name, American Idol encourages the worship of flags and apple pie among the populace. By its very name, an evaluation called the Narcissistic Personality Inventory permits a garden variety warehouse stocker to dissect personalities from the more noxious members of American society, stacking them with the overpriced doodads and baubles happily sold in a Target Greatland outlet. By her very name, Professor Jean Twenge makes my DNA (or my pants) feel inexplicable pangs of bullshit.
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Books To Jump Up and Down Over
Beyond Heaving Bosoms by Sarah Wendell and Candy Tan. The famed writers behind Smart Bitches, Trashy Books have written a very funny and thoughtful volume about romances, both Old Skool and New Skool. Here is a book that any smug and humorless literary manboy beating his flabby passive chest over Banville or Bolano should probably read pronto, if only for the distant possibility that he might get over himself. While the Choose Your Own Adventure segment at the end caused me to have a very disturbing dream involving Shelley Long (don't ask), Sarah and Candy did have me rethinking many of my own misperceptions when I wasn't busy laughing. They're not afraid to take on the New York Times Bok Review or even the groupthink within certain sectors of the romance community.
Alice Fantastic by Maggie Estep. This wild and highly enjoyable narrative involves two sisters (presumably, the third one was still being rented out by Chekhov), a hippie ex-junkie mother who lives with seventeen dogs, a murder, gambling, and libidinous Hollywood actresses who live in Woodstock. But this is the wonderful Maggie Estep we're talking here. And what seems at first like a quirky yarn becomes something unexpectedly moving about connectivity. What I love about Estep's work is the way that she'll juxtapose an extremely astute observation (now that you mention it, why do cab drivers always have somebody to talk with on the phone past midnight?) with an often outrageous story development.
Generosity by Richard Powers. It doesn't come out until September 29th, but Richard Powers's latest will have anyone committed to books reconsidering their literary fervor. I foresee some animosity from the vanilla critics hostile to idea-driven novels, but book bloggers, YouTube chroniclers, and MFAs would do well to plunge into this chance-taking narrative, which introduces vital questions about what the reader's relationship is with media, scientific dissection, and "creative nonfiction." Are we rats fleeing to happy cities? Or can we find the humanism within the purported plague?
Pieces for the Left Hand by J. Robert Lennon. Lennon is one of the most underrated fiction writers working today. Much as On the Night Plain proved that Lennon had a lot more in the toolbox than heartfelt (and often very funny) suburban satire, this slim but fascinating volume juxtaposes 100 small-town anecdotes -- arranged by category -- in a manner that reads, at times, like Nicholson Baker's passions for minutiae and, at other times, Stewart O'Nan's concern for psychological detail. The result is fiction that makes us wonder about whether one person's subjective view of particulars can entirely be trusted. This book never found a publisher in 2005. But thankfully, Graywolf has released it in the United States, along with Lennon's latest novel, The Castle.
Wonderful World by Javier Calvo. This wonderfully raucous volume has been completely ignored by the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times. But it's probably one of the most delightful reading experiences I've had this year. Calvo cavalierly mashes up multiple genres and manages to mix up familial subtext with larger-than-life, almost cartoonish characters. (Indeed, one might argue that one mobster's penis is a character of its own in this sprawling novel.). This is not an easy thing to pull off, but Calvo makes it work. And it's helped immeasurably by Mara Faye Lethem's idiom-specific translation. (See longer post.)
The Means of Reproduction, Michelle Goldberg This thoughtful book tackles the complicated (and little discussed) subject of reproductive rights from numerous angles, which includes a number of unpleasant but necessary ones. The upshot is that there isn't a quick fix solution for declining birth rates and fundamentalist abuses. Just about every political faction has contributed to the friction. But you'll want to read this book anyway to refamiliarize yourself with the topic, but also to understand just what's occurred during the past several decades to get us where we are today. (See also podcast interview with Goldberg.)
Or send materials to:
315 Flatbush Avenue, #231
Brooklyn, NY 11217
- The Possibilities of Small
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- When Parody Replaces Opportunity
- The Benefits of Notebooks
- Hate Mail Dramatic Reading Project #8
- Slowdown
I’m the last person to give creedence to the dreaded trend story, particularly when it quotes a professor citing MySpace, and usually a trend story like this in a mainstream spot like CNN means the trend is over, but I wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss these findings.
Number 1, the study it’s based on is a comparison with previous generations. The students are, according to these criteria, more narcissistic than their predecessors.
The question of whether or not this is a problem is an open one, granted, but your, real-life will humble them theory is just as oversimplified.
They don’t need a savings account to keep things going, they just need to tap in to the nearly unlimited supply of short term credit, or, in many cases of the upper middle to upper classes, the nearly unlimited supply from over-indulgent parents. Consumer debt among recent college graduates is growing exponentially, and all the studies of their behavior indicates that they don’t see trouble on the horizon. They’re much more likely to live beyond their means than ever before.
Ultimately, things will come crashing down, but the trough will be much deeper before, more bankruptcies, more broken relationships, less ability to purchase homes, etc…
I don’t really worry about this stuff because it’s totally cyclical. The next generation will see the profligacy of this one and revolt against it, but that doesn’t mean that this generation isn’t facing some problems.
how is narcissism measured? is the same person that interviewed the previous generations interviewing these kids? if yes, what does that mean? if no?
and, to begin with, isn’t gauging someone’s personality a subjective thing?
narcissism isn’t new.
and just because you peruse myspace or youtube doesn’t make you a narcissist. that’s like saying every time I sing, “My country tis of thee, sweet land of liberty,” I’m automatically being a narcissist, you know, because it has a fucking ‘my’ in it. i’m sure if they had myspace during the 20s all the flappers would being tearing that shit to pieces. sorry, I agree with ed: complete and utter horseshit. if there are a lot of narcissists today it’s only because there are more people.
If harold had bothered to read the article, he would have seen that the degree of narcissism is measured by using a standardized inventory (same kind of thing as Meyers-Briggs) that has been administered yearly since 1982. Given that the test is standardized it doesn’t need to be the “same person” who administers the test.
“Personality” may be a subjective thing, but measuring personality traits can indeed be done using this kind of tool. It doesn’t necessarily explain or predict behavior, but it’s the exact kind of thing psychaiatrists use to diagnose something like depression. Of course narcissism isn’t new, but again, if you read the article, which summarizes the study, you’d find that what we would consider narcissistic attitudes in a much higher percentage of the population than in previous generations.
Now, I imagine there’s benefits as well as problems with increasing narcissism and they quote some “experts” in the article discussing such. Personally, I see it as more of a negative than a positive, particularly when paired with other findings they cite which shows that today 75% of college freshmen say that it is “very important” to be very well off, as compared to 44% in 1966.
One can debate the effects of these changes, but to deny that these are changes in attitudes seems to be a kind of willful ignorance.
Ed seems to maintain that they’ll get theirs when confronted with reality. My feeling is that their desire to be “very well off” combined with increased narcissism is a recipe for serious problems, problems of a greater magnitude than faced in previous generations. At some point, attitudes will reset, parents will become less permissive, young people will rebel against the attitudes of the previous generation, but I don’t think it’s unreasonable to believe that there’s going to be a rocky ride.
Consumer debt among recent college graduates is growing exponentially, and all the studies of their behavior indicates that they don’t see trouble on the horizon. They’re much more likely to live beyond their means than ever before.
Those things are true of all American adults.
Also, could the fact that today’s college freshmen think it is ‘very important’ to be well of have anything to do with the fact that it IS very important to be well off? We are a society of the rich, the poor, and the economically insecure, shrinking middle. If you fall off the boat, you drown. No health care, probably not another good-paying job in your life, bankruptcy protection harder to qualify for than ever before, etc., etc., etc. If that’s what today’s freshmen think, they’re right.
Don’t blame the kids.
Oh for fuck’s sake – ‘barkingkitten’ above SHOULD read ‘FreakyBeaky’.
Pretty soon, based on the findings of this study of narcissistic behavior, Pharmecutical companies will have a pill that will cure narcissism. I agree with Ed. RIDICULOUS!!!!! It is just going to turn into another marketing vehicle for corporate pill pushers.