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Friday, May 31, 2013

Guest Post from Boomer Lit Author Laurie Boris


The Baby Boomer Generation Gap

The burgeoning genre of Baby Boomer Lit fascinates me. I love the stories authors are telling about the challenges confronting this generation as we face our mortality but still want to squeeze more out of life.

Often forgotten, however, is that technically, baby boomers represent (mostly Americans) born between 1946 and 1964. That’s a span of eighteen years, for those of you good with math or who happen to have a calculator handy. So theoretically, two generations could be contained within this one moniker: two generations with very different goals and ideals.

I noticed this “gap” as a teenager. My older brother and his friends (born between 1955 and 1957) seemed to be living on a completely separate plane from me (1961) and my younger brother (1963). Even though the span between our ages is not that long, his lifestyle and his interests were not ours. He wanted to go to Woodstock. I wanted to go to a Warren Zevon concert. I partied with my friends and ended up sipping iced tea in the pool. He partied with his friends and ended up…well, there’s a lot he doesn’t remember from back then.

So when I began to write the story that would become The Joke’s on Me, it seemed natural to pit two Baby Boomer sisters, born fourteen years apart, against each other. Jude, the elder Goldberg sibling, at seventeen puts flowers in her hair and runs off to San Francisco with a rock band. She gets married barefooted on the beach. She lives in a commune and becomes an early feminist, Gloria Steinem’s home phone number one of her most prized possessions. Frankie, the menopause baby, was three when her pretty hippie sister took off for good. She grew up cynical, caustic, and always ready to make fun of her sister’s freewheeling generation, which forms the meat of her Hollywood stand-up comic act.

Ironically, the two end up back in their mother’s bed-and-breakfast in the town of Woodstock (actually about forty-three miles from the site of the original concert at Yasgur’s Farm in Bethel, New York), spent from personal disappointments. Following Jude’s fourth divorce, she’s returned to help Mom run the business. Frankie’s Hollywood life falls apart with an exclamation point when she can’t find work and her bungalow rides a mudslide into the Pacific, leaving her only the clothes on her back and a red Corvette convertible of questionable ownership.

Although Frankie and Jude were born fourteen years apart into essentially different families and never had much of a relationship, the sisters both face common baby boomer experiences. What should they do about Mom, who has a stroke and is showing signs of Alzheimer’s? How, with their histories, can they have any credibility taking a hard line on drugs and alcohol with Jude’s eighteen-year-old son? And are new relationships worth the bother, even if they’re with old flames?

Writing about these issues is a way of taking ownership of them. And hopefully, helping others along the way, whether that’s making them feel less alone with their problems, giving them a needed break from them, or just sharing a good laugh or cry, depending.




About the Author

Laurie Boris is a freelance writer, editor, proofreader, and former graphic designer. She has been writing fiction for over twenty-five years and is the award-winning author of three novels: The Joke’s on Me, Drawing Breath, and Don’t Tell Anyone. When not playing with the universe of imaginary people in her head, she enjoys baseball, cooking, reading, and helping aspiring novelists as a contributing writer and editor for IndiesUnlimited.com. She lives in New York’s lovely Hudson Valley.



19 comments:

  1. Loved reading this Laurie and I follow you on IU as well. It's a very interesting take on boomers and the differences they share along with the similarities! Now that's a hook!

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  2. I love the premise of your book, this close look at the (often) disconcerting span of baby boomers that indeed cross two generations: they obviously ave a lot in common but much separates them too. This is the kind of theme - one that reflects life in all its various dimensions - from which great literature is made!

    Just a question: I see you wrote 3 novels but here you only speak of the first, The Joke's On Me (I love the title, btw!). Are the other two novels boomer novels too, are they a follow up or something else altogether?

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    1. Thank you, Claude. One the novels, Don't Tell Anyone, is a boomer book, but the other, Drawing Breath, is contemporary novel about a teen artist who develops a crush on her art teacher.

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  3. My oldest brother and youngest sister are fourteen years apart, so I can identify with this story. I love the idea of exploring the 'generational' differences within a generation. I'll be checking out your book.

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    1. Hi, Beth, thank you. It is really interesting. We're all so different!

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  4. Excellent insightful take on the boomer generation. My sister is 12 years younger than me, was a big Monkeys fan while I bought every album of the Mamas and the Papas. Looking forward to reading your novel, Lauri.

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  5. "Writing about these issues is a way of taking ownership of them." I love that line, Laurie.
    Thanks for sharing how your personal experiences gave rise to your book.

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    1. Thank you, Shelley, and thank you for the opportunity! :D

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  6. I can certainly identify with what you wrote! It seemed to me that my youngest brother and I grew up in different worlds.

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  7. Your description of the separation of siblings is so relatable to me. Being the oldest with my youngest sibling 10 years apart, and 4 of us are practically split in 2's I understand how unrelatable we are in so many ways
    Your book is being added to my reading list!

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    1. Thank you, Angil. That must have made for some interesting experiences growing up.

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  8. Very appropriate. Grouping people into generations is not an exact science. Baby boomers span many views of the world and, as you point out, the "flower power" era that seems so central to that generation only really flourished in the latter '60s. I well remember John Lennon declaring that "the dream is over" circa 1970. How devastated I felt!
    Not so long ago I blogged about this subject myself. If anyone's interested, they can find it at http://meansal.wordpress.com/

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    1. Funny, meansal, I was about nine then, and I didn't know what he meant! Thanks for dropping by and for sharing your post.

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  9. Hi Laurie. What a perfect and relatable premise for a book! I had the same experience with my sister and I four years apart in age with her trailing the last spectrum of the baby boomer age range. I look forward to reading your book!
    Sharon

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    1. Thank you, Sharon! There is so much rich material in these conflicts to mine.

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