Generation X Rocks. Contemporary Peninsular Fiction, Film, and Rock Culture (review)

Constructing the social frame for a study of culture can be risky business, especially if it leads to general assertions about social behavior which perhaps anecdotally appear to be correct, but which are unsupported by documentation. In their introduction to Generation X Rocks, the editors slide perilously close to such assertions as they lay out the markers for understanding the cultural production of Generation X over the past twenty years or so. For example, they contend that by the late 1980s in Spain, "a significant part" of Spanish youth enjoyed "the luxury of forgetting the past and being able to concentrate in [sic] living an exuberant, consumerist, drug-imbued, sex-abundant life" (xiv). And later, when comparing the commercialization of rock music to religion, the editors observe that "For most, religion is only a Sunday feel-good activity" (xvi) while noting that, for some, it serves as powerfully transformative.

While these (and other) observations push the introduction too easily through the cultural complexity of contemporary Spain, the individual essays of Generation X Rocks (including two excellent pieces by the editors) generally offer a substantive and nuanced reading of Generation X, of the global forces that help generate their works and shape their reception, and above all, of the overflow of popular culture that informs them. The book approaches Generation X broadly (with sections devoted to Generation X narratives as a whole and the influence of sex, drugs, and rock and roll), as well as narrowly (with sections on José Angel Mañas's Historias del Kronen, the narrative of Ray Loriga, and gender). While inevitably several of the essays cover the same critical ground (especially in the introductions of the individual pieces, where some judicious editing would have culled several repetitions about the markers that broadly define Generation X), the focus on various works, influences, and even intentions of Generation X writers provides the opportunity for historical perspective and substantive textual analysis, which in turn make the book highly useful.

Nearly all of the essays point to how Generation X authors have not only absorbed popular culture into their work but how they make intertextual connections (e.g., television, movies, and especially music) the very foundation of their writing. While contributors to the volume do not share a single perspective on what actually constitutes Generation X (or for that matter, whether there even exists a Generation X), they tend to attribute similar artistic characteristics and concerns to writers and directors of the X cohort: for example, resistance to dominant cultures; estrangement from the mainstream; boredom, and perhaps depression; and of course the persistent paradigm of sex, drugs and rock music. In this way, the book as a whole offers an important overview of Generation X and the foundational, shared traits of those associated with it.

It is in the intelligent reading of texts and cultural contexts by several of the contributors where the book is at its best. Elizabeth Scarlett's essay, "Not Your Father's Rock and Roll," for example, traces differences between the Generation X writers and the previous generation of Spanish novelists in relation to rock music, and she artfully shows how the earlier generation (e.g., Muñoz Molina, Rivas) uses rock to contribute to their project of dissidence while Generation X writers (e.g., Mañas, Etxebarria) draw on rock to enhance their desencanto. Randolph Pope brilliantly reads the epilogue of Historias del Kronen and shows how both intrinsic and contextual meanings of the novel require social and historical understanding; Jorge Pérez's excellent essay on the rock 'n' road writing of Ray Loriga is conceptually smart and analytically astute in the way it draws out the construction of gender roles, cultural space, and national identity in Loriga's work.

Three other essays also stand out among several fine pieces: Linda Levine's chapter on Iciar Bollaín's Te doy mis ojos offers a penetrating exploration of domestic violence and gender relations; Nina Molinaro moves deftly...