Jon Savage

The Creation of Youth Culture

Teenage

Lindy

My favorite thing I learned from this book is that, outside the funeral home where the funerals of Bonnie & Clyde were ongoing, the funeral home owner dissipated the crowd of unruly fans by spraying embalming fluid at them. 

Compressing the years 1875-1945 into 465 pages and focusing on England, the US, and Germany, Jon Savage sketches in broad strokes what he terms "the prehistory of the teenager," arguing against the idea that youth culture is a strictly post-World War II phenomenon. Savage is a fairly lively writer and has a good eye for detail, both of which count for a lot as far as readability goes. 

While Savage is concerned with the dynamics of social power that lead to the construction of "teenagers" as a social class, there is is little analysis afforded to the tensions within that class, how how the category of "teenage" itself is de facto exclusive. The lives of African-American girls, for example, are completely absent from this book's narrative, and I don't think this problem with the book is even close to being a blip on the author's radar.

So my verdict is: Teenage is pretty standard.

Teenage The Creation of Youth Culture

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