Balsamic Dreams
by Joe Queenan
Picador £10.99, pp200

Joe Queenan has made a career for himself as a contrarian, hoisting his victims with their own petards. Here, he turns his vehemence on the baby-boomers, the generation of Americans born between the years 1940 and 1960. For Queenan, this was a generation of promise, the first to be in a position to end racism, homophobia and poverty. And yet it let him down, giving up its dreams of peace, love and equality: 'They [went] with the flow but it was actually the cash-flow'. Queenan should know what he is talking about; he is a boomer. But reading this book, one is never sure how much he believes his own words. Rather than elegant exposition, he writes in jabs and feints, preferring brutish bullet-point paragraphs that fail to persuade. The occasional flashes of wit may raise a smile but they don't convince.