Adrian Nicole LeBlanc and the extinction

When I found out Monday afternoon that Adrian Nicole LeBlanc was speaking at the City University of New York this past Tuseday, I more or less postponed my life to be there. I've read her first (and so far only) nonfiction book RANDOM FAMILY four -- maybe five times? -- definitely at least four, cover to cover. I read it and I'm dazzled by the work that went into it, the lyric quality of the writing, that it's beautiful and true and, ultimately, heartbreaking.

Who could have written such a book? "Who" turned out to be a short, curly-haired woman with a dry wit, prone to aphorisms that will make you get a notebook out. Modest, but not in a fake way. Sees herself as a reporter first, and a writer second, but asserts that anyone could have written her study of teenagers and drug dealers in the Bronx. Anyone could go out and report that story?

Not anyone. This woman, who often refers to her years of note-taking and tape-recording (and sometimes, forgetting to do either during her subjects' busy days) as "the fieldwork" and says she doesn't even remember RANDOM FAMILY's warm published reception because her father was being treated for cancer, ultimately dying just after the book's release.

It's hard to shake the feeling, even as LeBlanc references the journalism class she's teaching at CUNY this semester, that that mold has been fundamentally fractured in a way. Writers in the crowd, can you imagine spending 10 years on a project now? And being able to live and continue working in the meantime (LeBlanc wasn't exactly holed in a garret, she did earn 2 master's degrees while working on RANDOM FAMILY)? Ten years. It boggles the mind. (Ten years ago I could barely see past my next AP test and/or the end of the world, for the record.) And she didn't have a book deal all that time -- it's one thing for an established author to work for 10 years on something, but another for a first-timer.

The consolation for all of us is that while they may not make reporters like her any more, she is still working -- readying a second book now, on struggling comedians (excerpts from which she read Tuesday night). That has to be enough for now.

"People kept asking me, 'Where are you in this book?' And my first answer was, I'm everywhere in it! I'm in every word! I made all the choices!"

--Adrian Nicole LeBlanc on RANDOM FAMILY. Saw her speak two days ago, it was incredible, I'm still digesting -- way more tomorrow.

Hey, remember when everyone used to talk about Generation X?

Details made a list of the 25 best Generation X books, representing "authors who composed their masterpieces on computers instead of Underwoods, and were affected more directly by Nintendo than Nagasaki." Oscar Wao makes an appearance, as do THE CORRECTIONS, EVERYTHING BAD IS GOOD FOR YOU, RANDOM FAMILY and A SUPPOSEDLY FUN THING I'LL NEVER DO AGAIN.

I guess it shouldn't be surprising that this list is way more enticing than I had expected when AMERICAN PSYCHO came up as the first title. (I liked it, but Bateman as a standard bearer was not promising.) Picking that Rick Perlstein book about Goldwater is a stroke of genius -- or I think it will be when I get around to reading it. But the notion of Gen-X, so beloved of '90s magazine writers (they're ruining everything! Wait, they're actually the best!), never gets aired out any more. By some researchers' stats the President would be a Gen-Xer (if you consider that the last members of the Baby Boom generation were born in 1960), but no one ever referred to his campaign as "the Gen-X campaign." You wouldn't, it would sound silly. It was such a powerful social term, and then it vanished.

So why publish this list now that the term has fallen out of favor somewhat? Well, Generation X writers have had time now to establish themselves. I didn't check to see if every author on there would fall into that demographic*, but to take two mentioned up there, both Junot Diaz and DFW had substantial gaps between first success and next major acclaimed work (11 and 9 years, respectively). If Details had made this list in 1996, DFW would have made it but Diaz probably wouldn't have on the strength of his first book alone.

A list of Generation Y writers made today would consist largely of prodigies -- or whatever you would call people who had been published at age 28 or under -- and perhaps not be representative of trends shared by the entire group. (And while we're on my generation, we reject the label "Millennials," as if being born in the '80s were akin to joining a cult and we're going to go all comet-eyed any minute, so stop trying to make fetch happen.)

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*I checked the authors mentioned here -- Diaz b. 1968, Franzen b. 1959, Steven Johnson b. 1968, DFW b. 1962, Ellis b. 1964, Perlstein b. 1969. LeBlanc I couldn't confirm but she graduated from undergrad in '86 according to her website so we'll put her b. 1964. Franzen is probably over the line into late-Boomer, but that's a wavery line.

Books That Make You Cry (Maybe)

The holiday has left me in a bright & shiny mood, so it seems like the appropriate time to talk about sad books. (We'll save the list of books that make you cry of laughter for a more dire time, like... November.) These books moved me, even if they didn't move me to tears, so in case you've been having too much of a good time:

Sad Childhood Tie Wilson Rawls, WHERE THE RED FERN GROWS/ Katherine Paterson, BRIDGE TO TERABITHIA. I wasn't allowed to have a dog growing up, but I did have a best friend.

Sad And True That You Can't Put Down Adrian Nicole LeBlanc, RANDOM FAMILY. LeBlanc followed this Bronx family for over 10 years and you want them to improve their lives so badly, even when it seems like they're stuck in the same self-destructive cycles. This book is a nonfiction Tolstoy novel, and everyone should read it, but it's hard to take sometimes.

Sad But Beautiful Elizabeth Hay, LATE NIGHTS ON AIR. I named this my favorite book of 2008 and at its conclusion felt what the Portuguese call saudade -- an immense longing for the characters and the situation that could never come to pass again.

Sad... Or Frustrating? If my mom were making this list COLD MOUNTAIN would probably top the sad heap as the saddest. Without giving away the ending, when I finished the book, I just felt fooled. I would put MY SISTER'S KEEPER into this pile as well.

Saddest (And True) If you can read Rob Sheffield's LOVE IS A MIX TAPE and walk away unmoved, you should probably put yourself on the transplant list for a heart. Sheffield and his wife met as DJs and fell in love through music, and then one day she fell over dead, just like that. He uses the device of mix tapes he made and they exchanged, and I meant to make some of them in playlist form, really I did, but it just got really dusty in my apartment, okay?!

Has a book ever made you cry... that you can admit?