Pariah

noun

Definition: An outcast.

Half the people I know can’t spell pariah, let alone tell you what it means. Which is why it’s so strange that so many people my age make me feel like one.

I struggle to find the time for books just like everyone else these days. Fortunately, I ride public transit to work, so I have at least an hour and a half everyday to read. I have varied interest in material; from current affairs, to biographies, new short stories, and old classics. So when I’m sitting on the train reading Ayn Rand’s We the Living, I’m all of a sudden very aware that the other twenty-something’s around me are reading He’s Just Not That Into You, Confessions of a Shopaholic, Eat Pray Love, and things of this nature. Not that I have a problem with these books, I just have a problem with this gap that seems to get wider every year.

When I get off the train, I sit outside Starbucks reading, and a woman passes me.

“That’s a great book, she’s my favorite author,” she says.

She looks 45.

I’m 24.

Granted, I’m not normal. I was reading Bram Stoker’s Dracula and the unabridged Les Miserables when I was 12. I’m no wunderkind; I just didn’t have any fucking friends. But now I’m in my mid twenties, and I can’t talk to anyone my age about the birth of Rand’s Objectivism in Soviet Russia, or why I prefer Poe’s Cask of Amontillado to The Raven, or why The Ox-bow Incident’s moral subtext can still be applied to society today.

And it breaks my fucking heart. (to see what breaks The B I G Gypsy’s fucking heart, click the link!)

I know, I’m an elitist. And I do appreciate modern literature. But literature, as with anything else, is an ongoing movement, built upon everything that came before it, carved out of the social, political, philosophical, and economic climate at the time. It’s like comparing Quentin Tarantino to Sam Peckinpah, or Souljah Boy to Ice T.

It’s true that I might identify more with Amory from Fitzgerald’s This Side of Paradise than with any recent characters, but there are still authors out there keeping wit, intelligence, and overall literacy alive. Dave Eggers, Michael Chabon, Chuck Palahniuk, Nick Hornby, just to name a couple. Here at sexy gypsy, we’ve decided to branch out and start talking about these and other authors who are making their mark on our generation’s literature. We’ve already given a nod to Hornby’s High Fidelity, and we all know that reading takes infinitely longer than watching a movie or listening to a new album, so give us a little time, and let’s hope Voltaire wasn’t totally right (I don’t have to explain myself to you, go read a fucking book).

-The Great White Gypsy

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