Volume 47, Number 20 · December 21, 2000
Valentine in Sepia
By Joyce Carol Oates
What It Felt Like: Living in the American Century
by Henry Allen
Pantheon, 159 pp., $20.00
If this is an Age of Cyberspace, it's also, perversely, an Age of Nostalgia, which is very different from, perhaps antithetical to, an age in which the study of history is revered. Nostalgia is of all preoccupations the easiest, for it's a litany of impressions, not a record of fact; it's under no obligation to be faithful to reality. The recent millennium was a celebration ad nauseam of the twentieth century but the impulse is always with us: nostalgia is a luxurious emotion we feel, after a certain age, for a mostly imagined and highly edited past that seems to us more innocent, therefore more worthy, than the present. It's the most bittersweet of emotions, predicated upon loss. In an affluent, rapidly changing society, nostalgia is a highly marketable commodity. It's a pleasant sort of pseudo-pain, or pang; it feels like yearning, like unrequited puppy love, yet with an undercurrent of rage. (For an overvaluing of the past means a devaluing of the present and, very likely, a resistance to contemplating any future at all.) The Greek root of 'nostalgia' suggests 'homesickness,' but we can assume that the 'home' for which we're sick has been ameliorated by amnesia, like Polaroids that, as they fade, allow us to appear more attractive than we were.
Review, 2724 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |