Diana West
The Death of the Grown-up.
St. Martin’s Press, 272 pages, $23.95
It’s impossible for me, not being a lexicographer, to say exactly when “applesauce” was replaced by another substance as the popular synonym for “nonsense.” I can, however, say that the word ought to make a comeback as soon as possible. Generally speaking, adults don’t eat applesauce. They shouldn’t accept the infantilizing effects of figurative applesauce, either, least of all in an age when “here comes the plane” reminds us of something altogether different from the approach of a rubber-coated spoon.
That’s Diana West’s argument: Fork over your applesauce for the meat and potatoes of adult thought, behavior, and responsibility, though they may be harder to digest. “Once upon a time,” she writes, “childhood was a phase, adolescence did not exist, and adulthood was the fulfillment of youth’s promise. No more. Why not?” She indicts the music industry, the laissez-faire or even actively deleterious parenting style of the Baby Boomers, and the fact that the young are now regarded as sophisticated when they are merely knowing. She blames multiculturalism and political correctness. She complains about misnomers like “adult bookstore” and “mature audience.” And, as William Grimes wrote in The New York Times (I thought he was joking), she even tackles “declining standards of shame among Rotary Club members.”
So why don’t I find it all funny, as Grimes clearly does? He’s correct to say that West’s book is “part argument, part rant,” and to
