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13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Well-written but Disturbing, November 30, 2009
This review is from: Don't Follow Me, I'm Lost: A Memoir of Hampshire College in the Twilight of the '80s (Hardcover)
I bought this book because I've had two kids go to Hampshire College. Richard Rushfield can tell a good story, and I was quite entertained by his descriptions of his crowd's coming-of-age hijinks. Being a 'Boomer myself, I am not that familiar with the avant-garde pre-grunge scene depicted in, "Don't Follow Me..." Hampshire can still be a haven for alienated angst-ridden outcasts and to be sure, Political Correctness can be over-the-top. Still, I found parts of the book disturbing. Maybe it is Rushfield's lack of introspection, given the distance of time. Sure, lots of us did things as teenagers, that in retrospect, were incredibly stupid, dangerous, insensitive or immature. But, even 20 years later, he still seems to revel too much in the re-telling. He and his buddies did everything they could to piss off the maximum number of people possible, and clearly succeeded spectacularly. They took advantage of Hampshire's culture of permissiveness and toleration and threw it back in the faces of those who were trying to accommodate this band of misfits. In most other colleges, they would have been expelled long ago, if not brought up on criminal charges.
To be sure, some of their 'activities' were funny, and certainly the irony or parody was lost on too many other members of this earnest community. I just wish there was more acknowledgment that these guys were ultimately misguided. I suspect that Rushfield still doesn't think so.
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12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Hyperbolic and Ultimately Unsatisfying., January 2, 2010
This review is from: Don't Follow Me, I'm Lost: A Memoir of Hampshire College in the Twilight of the '80s (Hardcover)
I found "Don't Follow Me, I'm Lost" overly hyperbolic and disappointingly uninspired. It doesn't doesn't go where it needs to go or reveal anything meaningful about the characters. Everything just sort of happens to Rich. We don't get any emotional or intellectual insight beyond Rich being bewildered. There isn't any real story, which could be fine in a memoir, but it is as if Rich's actual thoughts and feelings have been excised from the book.
Most disappointing is the lack of self-awareness from the author. He talks about how he and his friends lived in a squalid mess, unable to muster the energy to clean or even shop for food. I remember the prevailing theory at the time was that these were kids who weren't used to being without the housekeeper and the nanny. If that isn't the explanation, then what is? Rich didn't seem to recognize then, and perhaps doesn't now, that Hampshire's biggest problems stemmed from being a young institution with a weak endowment. They just didn't have the money to uphold ideals. This is why someone could be such a problem on campus and not get kicked out. It wasn't luck or cleverness. It was paying full tuition. Other than one mention of being surprised to find out that his "working class rocker" friend wasn't working class, Rich doesn't touch on the class issue at all, yet there was a big class issue at Hampshire which no one wanted to recognize.
This book has a few amusing points. It's unfortunate that he was assigned to the dreaded "quiet floor" his first semester, but he treats this as the reason for everything that follows. The torpor over his group as they try to get to Denny's felt like the most genuine and interesting passage in the book. But overall the book did not feel genuine, despite Rich's insistence that everything in the book is true. Even details as simply as the geographic distance on campus are wrong. ... See More
Rich leaves out what would have been most interesting to learn about. He reports dispassionately on the suicide of Andrew Hermann, and his group's involvement. His only insight is that "the aftermath was the biggest P.R. spectacle the school had ever known." He doesn't describe any emotion, his or anyone else's, which is a little chilling. It is a troubling story that Rich wasn't present for, but which Rich was pulled into because he resembled Andrew's brother. We don't get any follow up other than to learn people disliked Rich because he hung around with the group. Rich tries to play this for humor but it doesn't really work. It's a shame, because there is an interesting, if dark, story there that has apparently led Andrew's older brother to become a psychic medium who claims he can communicate with the dead.
Each time the author faces criticism, he responds with the same answer; the book is "his" experience and it doesn't represent anyone else's. Rich don't seem to recognize that his choices affected other people's lives and that widely overstating things like drug use for the sake of being funny paint an inaccurate picture of Hampshire at the time. It is as though he wrote a fictional account and then rewrote the book as non-fiction but never completed the transition.
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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
don't read me, i'm lost (really), December 28, 2009
This review is from: Don't Follow Me, I'm Lost: A Memoir of Hampshire College in the Twilight of the '80s (Hardcover)
if holden caulfield stepped into an h.g wells times machine and popped out several decades later in western mass, he would naturally find his way to hampshire college-- and be the kind of person richard rushfield, author of this rather jejune memoir, strives to be. while he's good at set-piece satires-- i rather enjoyed his debut novel about hollywood called "on spec"-- rushfield's autobiographical treatment of his druggy, dystopic college days is really same old, same old, like one of those saturday night live sketches that go on way too long.
there is really no one to root for in this entropic rendering of life at hampshire college in the 80s. it's animal house meets animal farm, judging from the squalor and filth the author and his pals choose to live in. if he wanted to waste his parent's money in order to hang out at a college with countercultural cred, that's his choice. but material for a book? nah. the ridicule and observational humor is apatow-like, and i can't tolerate his adolescent films.
there's nothing grown up about this bildungrsoman. what's even sadder, is the boredom and tedium and monotony conveyed through the prism of his youthful eyes. while he's a perversely proud member of the anarchist campus clan, aka the supreme dicks, it becomes exhausting and worthless to read about these limp you know whats.
prediction: with the author's hollywood and magazine ties, expect fox or fx or showtime or hbo to one day make a series about a dysfunctional liberal arts college in the pre-dot.com mid to late 80s.
if you are in your late teens, angst-ridden and artsy and looking for a party school to do your own thing, this book is for you. or if you had gone to hampshire but don't remember much of your time there, think of this book as a refresher course. everyone else, make a wise detour.
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