As one would expect from the Guardian, this is only addressing a small cross-section of literary fiction. While I wouldn't agree with the article writer's conclusions, (I'm not big on deriding capitalism as evil), I think this is a pretty clever article. I was born at the end of 1979, and grew up in the sticks, but I went off to a liberal college, where academia was promoting many ideas that are pretty mainstream now. And this sounds a lot like people I've met. Over-educated, rootless, ultra over-analytical. I think its a part of what happens when you take away traditional views of marriage, work, relationships and home, combined with an information overload, and no widely accepted worldview to make sense of it. Be it good or bad, it creates people who can't figure out what it means to have a relationship, or even a sense of place, and who have no strong sense of purpose when they do have one, except maybe outrage (or apathy) at the 'system'. I also think these are trends that have been brewing in literary fiction for years. I suspect these 'millenial' novels are a new iteration of something that used to be edgy and is now becoming mundane. But you know I haven't read any of these books, just read about them, so I could be totally off.
Besides, what do I know? I'm almost forty. I'll crawl back into my hole with my Neil Postman and Jane Austen collection.
