Balsamic Dreams
   Joe Queenan
  2001 Henry Holt & Co.
    ISBN: 0805067205


The Baby Boomers have been called the most selfish, avaricious & hypocritical generation to so far step up to the plate. This professional iconoclast & self-professed wit explains how this generation lost its way in a rollicking commentary on the absurd & unheard.

The first time I came across the word balsam was when my brothers made model aeroplanes & the light fragile “wood” of the kits was called balsa. Then I discovered balsam was the name for an aromatic substance flowing spontaneously or by incision from a plant which did not necessarily remain a liquid. Then I learned about balsamic bottles. Finally I came across balsamic vinegar which was all the rage a while back; it was talked about as if it was some newfound salad elixir. I thought it looked like a hydroponic experiment dug out of Darwin's wine cellar, tasted like it too!

On the cover Joe has a sheepish smirk while showing off the once ubiquitous & incendiary finger salute of the 60s which is itself derived from Churchill's up-yours to Hitler. As the generation that brought you label reading, do check out the fine print on this label, it is amusing.

Joe sets out to disabuse ourselves of the notion that Baby Boomers actually did anything earth-shaking back then. With a dig in our ribs & a coy turn of phrase, he reminds us of what from that era, holds particular reverence & reference in today's middle age. Of course his perspective is mawkishly masculine, how else would it be for an unreconstructed chauvinist? You should read his tirade about our children!

How come he didn't put an Index in his book to make it easier for us readers to see how often he mentions Van Damme; Barry Manilow; The Rolling Stones; Jerry Brown; Christopher Columbus; The Greatest Generation; The Viet Nam War; Ravi Shankar; Rap Music; George Washington; Bill Clinton; Ku Klux Klan; The Second World War; Sammy Davis, Jr.; Kiki Dee & Seattle's Experience Music Project, et al?

In his chapter Good Lovin' Gone Bad he concocts a recipe for what America might have become had Baby Boomers “stuck to their idealistic guns” -- would “peace, love & understanding” have swept away the gun lobby? A mind boggling concept. American History: the B-side is knee-slapping, teeth-rattling funny!

As I was reading through Balsamic Dreams a slew of questions popped up to ask this irrascible raconteur:

1. How could he write about Buffy Saint-Marie & Leonard Cohen in the same sentence?

2. What is an “Everyday Epiphany” & why are daily BMs more profitable?

3. What on earth prompted him to spill our organic beans, let the cat out of our tie-dyed bag & lambaste the BBs?

4. What's wrong with BBs' children & what's the one word these children seem to have never heard from their parents?

5. Are the BBs really responsible for the plague of political correctness?

6. Would a true BB think it ecologically correct to be buried in a frangipani-soaked wattle cocoon in some field somewhere?

In conclusion Joe Queenan considers Baby Boomers maddeningly self-absorbed & detail-obsessed maniacs & were, in their much vaunted youth, much ado about nothing, basically.

All-in-all, jivin' Joe has painted a pretty patchouli picture of us BBs. His vitamin-enriched jeremiad owes everything to the vitality & naivete of those long-ago idealists & nothing to his 20/20 hindsight. I get the feeling Joe Queenan thinks the BBs haven't figured something out yet & have co-opted into a monetary-enhanced facsimile of their parents' lifestyles. Oh, Balsamic Dreams is amusing as Joe Queenan mocks himself as well as his generation. It does, however, get old, as he obviously is.

About as palatable as a salad soaked in balsamic vinegar -- some like it sour, some do not. Balsamic Dreams is an interesting look back on an age with all its oxymorons & hippy-dippy-ness.

More from Joe Queenan: Imperial Caddy; If You're Talking to Me, Your Career Must Be in Trouble; The Unkindest Cut; Red Lobster, White Trash, and the Blue Lagoon; Confessions of a Cineplex Heckler & My Goodness.
(09/02/01)

Rebecca