Customer Reviews

Don't Follow Me, I'm Lost: A Memoir of Hampshire College in the Twilight of the '80s

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1 star:		(3)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

I read this book because I went to a similar east coast college during the exact same time period and thought I might be able to relate to it. While there were bits that made me smile in recognition (rich kids acting working class, everyone dressing like old men, humorless pc types) there was no point to what he was writing. No story, no emotional development, not even any funny anecdotes or serious tragedies(other than the shocking suicide by cyanide that he briefly touches on - I kept screaming in my head, "No,no, go back to that incident, you finally brought up something worth discussing"). I REALLY don't get the reviewers who wrote this book was laugh out loud funny. I found it mind numbing in its banality. Those pages and pages and pages devoted to going to Dennys - I had to force myself to continue(I hate not finishing books or movies). I kept wondering how many of those people were clinically depressed. Most, I think. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy reading memoirs of people who have led dark or unhappy lives - The Basketball Diaries, Running with Scissors, Cherry, etc. Those authors, however, wrote about their emotions, their feelings, their development and change,exciting adventures, shocking lows. Devoting entire sections of a book to well, nothing, was not deep or significant but dull. I really wonder who he knows in publishing that got him this book deal. I can only imagine all the other more interesting memoirs that could have been published rather than this. It could have been a good article in a magazine but stretched as a book - nope.

A quaint memoir of another time and another place in another world far far away from the one most people occupy now or at any other time except maybe at college. The one question it leaves you with - is this specific to Hampshire, liberal arts colleges in America in general, the rest of the world, college in general? No matter what, this is a nice enough coming of age memoir set in a New England liberal arts college. At times a little choppy and disjointed, as the author struggles to connect a series of episodes from his five year stay at Hampshire, overall this is a pretty easy read, which frankly, is not going to change the world. Still, fairly cathartic for the author and for those of us who were around the five college area at the time. A time and a place like nowhere else, because, well, it was our time and place and shaped our lives and has maybe rubbed off on the lives of others, whether we liked it or not. A good read, that at least documents in some small way our own small part of the angst and the alienation, the love and the friendships that were and always will form the part of the legacy known as Generation X. It included Nirvana, it included the Supreme Dicks, it included Hampshire, it included rebellion and it included drugs. I guess it was pretty much like any other generation ...

College lifestyle of the most esoteric clashes with political correctness of the most absurd, laced with a good old-fashioned dose of teenage angst. The type of stuff nobody could've made up. Thanks to Richard Rushfield for chronicling his Hampshire College experience. I read this book so fast, I may have to give it a second go-round, just to catch the fine points.

Richard Rushfield has recreated a time, place, mood, events, and characters with wicked yet gentle and generous humor. Thank you, Richard! As a parent of one of those characters and occasional host of several more, I didn't find it quite so funny at the time; now I can't stop laughing.

If you went to Hampshire College, any year, or any or the 5 colleges in the area, this is a must read. It is entertaining, disturbing, illuminating and at times, a little poignant. Although I was there when all of what is written about took place, I learned so much I didn't know about. Honestly, it has filled in many holes for me regarding my time/experience at Camp Hamp. Also interesting perspective on the transformation of Hampshire resulting from the introduction of strict codes of political correctness conduct. Rushfield does a great job writing about an esoteric subject which could be a universal experience for many.

This book resonates with my own experience in such a funny, vivid and engaging way that I cannot recommend it more highly. Up and down the East Coast - at Hampshire and Smith (and Brown and Wellesley and U Mass...) - children of (real) hippies were desperately trying to prove their relevance by jumping on the Politically Correct bandwagon and running over anyone in their way. At that time, it was hard not to be subsumed - who isn't against Republicans? Gay-bashing? Womyn's rights? But it was easy to go too far - especially with the all too ardent support of the Baby Boomers just waiting for social justice to reemerge post-Ronald Reagan. The alternative to PC, however, was to be cast out - as a spoiler, a misogynist, a drag, even a racist. What in the world is there to do on a liberal arts campus where even humor is vilified? Read the book and see. I have not come across another work about young people set in this crazy time that speaks to me in such a real way.

I was around for much of what went on in this entertaining and endearing book ("Meg".)

Before reading it, I read in the promo blurb that the Hampshire student body hated the Dicks and friends. I was like, really? Its possible. No wait, I think I knew that at the time. Did I? No, that can't be true. I was scared to read it, paranoid that Rich would write something embarrassing about me.

Hampshire was (and still is, I hear) comprised mostly of smart, dynamic, diligent students whose brains and accomplishments are absolutely respectful. The Hampshire administration can tell you about them. Richard did well in his final 2 years there but that would not an amusing tale make, and that's not what this book is about. Its about his first two years spent "creative floundering" - discovering what you are passionate about. And, the socializing one experiences at college - usually the first time an 18 year old lives independent of parents.

But first, the non-accurate, IMHO:
- Richard mentions a *rumor* that the Dicks cheered on the kid who drank cyanide laced cool aid as part of a performance on a campus TV broadcast. I never heard that rumor. I was not inside the TV studio, but I do not believe anyone cheered him on. The Dicks were were dicks but not that dickish.
- I don't think Steve took 10 years to graduate.
- Re: the "graffiti sign" incident - the language on the sign that he quotes I believe is somewhat inaccurate. From what I heard, the grafitti was even funnier than what he writes. If the school had showed the sign to anyone, it would have been 100% obvious that it was a sarcastic, PARODY of political incorrectness! (Think: Daily Show or Bill Maher mocking PC'ness.) The school never told the student body what the graffiti said! (Oh, and he left out a funny tidbit - that when one of the students who was forced to write a public apology submitted it to the administration, they made this person edit out the phrase "black cloud", as in the incident cast a black cloud over the campus. The administration thought this sounded racist!)

OK, now the accurate:

Yeah, I'd say its an accurate depiction of mod 21 life.

Weirder and crazier stuff was also going on at the time that is not in this book and I suppose was not a part of RR's intimate experience there. But, Richard could have exploited some other antics and behavior but did not. (Thank you, RR!)

I thought the Dicks were brilliant at the time. Well, their (and my) films were brilliant. Conceptually, so was their music. (Emphasis on "conceptually." Think: John Cage as an arty, post-punk 20 year old in the 80s.)

I thought everyone in the Pioneer Valley saw our nocturnal clan as The Artists and Philosophers of the school, if not the world. I thought people respected us for what they were incapable of doing. You know. Why be conventional and boring when you could be avant garde? Hmm? (Yeah, I actually thought this. I was young and naive.) I was mean at times to people who were "Normal" I remember now, and I feel just terrible about it. What was I thinking? Oh, I remember now... I was angry due to a ****** up childhood in sheltered middle America. (Where American punk and thrash came from?)

I think my/our generation was notoriously unprepared for the real world. (I'm OK now, don't worry.) Our pre-baby boomer parents were unenlightened to things like expression of emotions and doing what makes you happy. They were still running on some kind of 1950's way of seeing the world. It sucks to be raised by that. I think the generations before and after us got better deals - the baby boomers were happy saving the world and growing their personal wealth, and their offspring had the benefit of communicative, involved parenting.

In this respect, the book can be seen as socio-anthropological examination of the marginalized Generation X. I could be wrong. I was no American Studies major. (Which reminds me that most HC graduates seem to go on to grad school (including myself.) The consensus is that grad school is loads easier than Hampshire too, btw.)

Also, this book takes place in the days just b4 everyone ate Prozac like candy. I wonder how the recent prevalence of ADD meds and antidepressants has changed the student culture landscape in the years after I was a student. I wonder if they are bunch of well-behaved good student zombies. How boring that would be?

OK, I have to go to the gym now. Good lord I am such a normal, bourgeoisie pig now. Whatever. Read the book - its s hoot!