In an essay I'm currently working on about those members of the Silent Generation who decided to throw their lot in with the Boomers, I wrote.
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| Author as a Silent Boomer |
"A “Boomerized” Silent’s reality is the result of our
having been torn between the generations that came before and after ours, of
our being equally drawn to the courage of the Greatest Generation and the vision and science of the Boomers. Divided between allegiances to the Greatest and Boomer generations, we have borrowed from both camps. We know
something about reading the Bible and
can enjoy the beauty of an old fashioned hymn. We’ve also read On the Origin of Species. We’ve tasted
the gritty dirt and limited vision of the Oklahoma dust bowl and heard the ocean
spanning song of whales in the silences of deep space. We’ve glimpsed the black
hole within the human breast that can make us do awful things and the monstrous
black holes of the Cosmos, eating space and time. We have, with interest and
curiosity, watched Gone With the Wind,
John Wayne’s Sands of Iwo Jima and a
few foreign films like 400 Blows,
reading along with subtitles. Later, we found Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, Federico
Fellini’s 8 ½ and Woody Allen’s Annie Hall. Most recently, with perhaps a
touch of skepticism and with our hearing aides tuned to theater settings, we
have watched Hunger Games and the Twilight series and most recently, with
great interest, Drive.
"Looking at those movie samples
alone, the distances between a Silent’s
points of reference become evident. They’re quite a stretch, aren’t they?
Spanning those distances has been an exciting cultural journey in both space
and time. Will all you Silent Boomers out
there who have successfully bridged the gap within yourselves please stand up
and give yourself a hand! We should be quite joyful."
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