Joanna Smith Rakoff

A Fortunate Age

Original airdate: December 4, 2009

“But this group, our group, wanted nothing to do with money, the whiff of which had, they thought, spoiled their brash bourgeois parents and aunts and uncles, all of whom were, inevitably, doctors or lawyers or businessmen or sometimes teachers, and none of whom had read Sentimental Education or could identify the term “deconstruction” or made regular visits to the theater, except, perhaps, to see musicals or Neil Simon comedies. They — the adults — were too corrupted, too swayed and jaded by the difficulties and practicalities of adulthood, by the banal labyrinths of health insurance and Roth IRAs, by the relative safety of Volvo versus Saab versus Subaru, or flat Scottish cashmere versus the newer, softer, fluffier — but possibly less durable — stuff, imported from Nepal, that Neiman’s is carrying lately.”

- from A Fortunate Age

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