But the young educated adults of the 90s - who were, of course, the children of the same impassioned infidelities and divorces Mr

But the young educated adults of the 90s - who were, of course, the children of the same impassioned infidelities and divorces Mr. Updike wrote about so beautifully - got to watch all this brave new individualism and self-expression and sexual freedom deteriorate into the joyless and anomic self-indulgence of the Me Generation. Today's sub-40s have different horrors, prominent among which are anomie and solipsism and a peculiarly American loneliness: the prospect of dying without once having loved something more than yourself.

David Foster Wallace, Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays