Rating: 
Summary: Sardonic observations and self-parody
Review: ...this is his latest opus and it is just as mean spirted and hilarious as the other two I have read. Only this time instead of going after the pop icons of do-gooder land (as in My Goodness: A Cynic's Short-lived Search for Sainthood (2000)) or the much beloved idols of Celebrityland, especially the left-wing variety (as in If You're Talking to Me, Your Career Must Be in Trouble: Movies, Mayhem and Malice (1994)), here Joe takes on the entire Baby Boomer generation, finding us vilely two-faced, contemptuously mediocre, insipidly uninspired, conspicuously consumptive, banally boring, and just downright dorky, with of course not the slightest insight into our own nature. As always his eye is sharp and his rapier even sharper, and as usual he goes after the usual suspects: anything he thinks is phony, and anybody who takes him- or herself too seriously, i.e., Sting, Jane Fonda, Ben & Jerry, The Bhagavad Gita, etc. (Joe, dude, those horses are dead! You killed 'em last time! Yes, but they keep coming back to life like kudzu.)In the first chapter Joe sets forth the crimes of his generation: e.g., "The unseemly search for the Fountain of Youth," "The concept of selective virtue," "Hypocrisy as a manageable lifestyle," etc. In the second he details the "High Misdemeanors," such as "Ostentatious displays of multicultural sensitivity," "That whole Eastern thing," "Totally unacceptable hair" ("There is a point at which middle-aged men with Art Garfunkelian hair cease to be foolish-looking and actually start frightening the people around them."), etc. Joe's ear for the pop culture is supersensitive and his ability to absorb and make fun of same is phenomenal. Three of the chapters are named after rock lyrics, "What a Fool Believes," "Play that Funky Music, White Boy," and "Good Lovin' Gone Bad," appropriated, of course, for their sardonic value. In fact, there are perhaps a hundred snippets of rock and roll lyric embedded in the text, revealing, by the way, that he originally had another book in mind--but so what? In the chapter entitled "Ten Days that Rocked the World" (that is, the world of the Baby Boomers) we have not only June 15, 1979, the day Rocky II was released, but December 17, 1973, the day of the Chilean wine boycott by politically conscious Americans willing to sacrifice for a Greater Good. As can be easily seen, Joe Queenan is a social critic who can take his place alongside not just H. L. Mencken and Jay Akin, but Terry Southern, Dwight MacDonald, Mark Twain, Jonathan Swift and Voltaire...
Rating: 
Summary: Continuing the Demonization of the Sixties Generation
Review: Queenan's book is yet another in the assault against an entire generation. This assault has been going on for over twenty years now. It's main goal is to trivialize, marginalize, and ultimately, demonize an entire generation. Why? Because the Sixties generation stood up against the U.S. war machine, and that's bad for corporate profits. The powers that be, largely based on the monies and interests of the WWII generation, never want to see that attitude again, and have done everything in their power to contain the spirit of the Sixites. Even the name, "Baby Boomer", is an insult. Most generations are known for what they have experienced. "Baby Boomer" describes the procreative ability of the parents of the Sixties Generation, and has nothing to do with the experiences and accomplishments of the Sixties Generation. Queenan plays into this, by stereotyping an entire generation by casting them all as Yuppies with 80s greed and lack of values, ignoring the many who have worked for social and economic change within their own communities. He joins a line of traitors within a generation, including such celebs as Tom Hanks and Jane Fonda. Don't read this book.
Rating: 
Summary: A Thoroughly Wasted Book on a Too-Easy Target
Review: I went to see Joe Queenan at my local independent bookstore, and laughed myself sore in the face. Then I actually read "Balsamic Dreams" and came away with a very different attitude. First of all: Joe, Joe, Joe! Whatever you paid your editor, you was ROBBED, man! I counted one particular paragraph...funny the first time, annoying the second, and downright appalling (There ya go...I used the consummate Boomer word) the third. Wasn't someone supposed to be catching these things? Or was the author so enthralled with his clever riffs, he just HAD to be sure we noticed? Bad Boomer, Joe. Very bad. Besides all that, yeah, yeah, yeah...we know! Boomers are annoying, they're self-absorbed, self-important, and we don't want to grow old. However, I look around at most of my friends, and we're all still trying to fight the good fight that we believed in waaaaaay back in the 60's and 70's. At the risk of sounding preachy (Another "appalling" Boomer trait), I don't own a car, nor do I have a kid named Tyler or Ashley (I will admit to a cat with an exotic name), and I threw out all of my "message" T-shirts ages ago. I don't own a Clapton CD, I never "bought into" the Eastern guru thing, and the only vinegar I own is used to flush my (non-espresso) coffee maker. Queenan took the easy...and cheap...way out for a few laughs. Not all of us born in the appropriate years fit his profile. My sympathies to the author for having the bad luck to know so many who do...but I wouldn't dream of really expressing those sympathies or proferring an empathetic hug...God only knows Queenan can't handle emotions! My advice to all you thinking of buying this book? Read it in spurts only, completely skip the revisionist "what if" chapter,...and by all means, take the "You're a Boomer if" quiz. Or...catch him at a reading, have a few laughs, save yourself the irritation or wading through this inflated whine.
Rating: 
Summary: Funny, but not up to Queenan's usual barbs
Review: Joe Queenan's RED LOBSTER, WHITE TRASH, AND THE BLUE LAGOON was perhaps the funniest book I've ever read. I'm talking "laugh out loud till your stomach hurts while you're walking home from the library reading it" funny. I should have realized that this was the pinnacle of Queenan's career. The problem with BALSAMIC DREAMS is that it's just too broad. Baby boomers as a generation are as varied as any other generation. Some of us drive Civics, not Ford Explorers. Some of us have cell phones but only use them for emergencies. Some of us don't have children at all, let alone overscheduled children named Courtney and Ryan. Some of us don't live in McMansions. And much of what Queenan blasts can be ascribed to any of the post-WWI generations. Queenan blasts Dennis Miller all over the place, but portions of this book sound an awful lot like Dennis Miller rants. One chapter seems directly lifted from one of George Carlin's word routines. He overuses words like "preposterous" and "appalling". Nevertheless, Queenan still can turn a phrase when he wants to, such as referring to the patter that people use when ordering at a coffee bar as "Starbucks Esperanto." BALSAMIC DREAMS is a good airplane read. You might even yuk out loud a few times. But I fear Joe Queenan is becoming a bit too derivative of not just himself, but of the irony-craftsmen he despises.
Rating:
Summary: Thanks for Sharing: Talkin' About My Generation
Review: "You may look bad, Bill, but we look just plain stupid." --Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen bemoaning Bill Clinton's graceless exit from the presidency. Without knowing anything else about him, Richard Cohen's apparent switcheroo from fawning to frowning over Liberal icon Clinton pegs him as the typical counter-culture Baby Boomer that Joe Queenan skewers so deftly in Balsamic Dreams. Baby Boomers may be as evenly divided about this very funny book as they are about the first Boomer president, whom Queenan dismisses as "The Great American Phony." Progressives who may still be enthralled with the guy may ask "How could you, Joe?" Conservatives, who never were, will wonder "What took you so damn long?" Born in 1950, Queenan is himself a Boomer, and a bit of a progressive. So producing such a witty though seldom good-natured portrait of his own generation, many of whose attributes he shares, could not have come easily. Balsamic Dreams is a collection of essays with two common themes: 1) Baby Boomers may have started out as valiant, idealistic youths, but over time became total sellouts, hypocrites, and cowards, and 2) From the very beginning, Boomers had one dominant characteristic: "They were annoying beyond belief." "At the end of the day," laments Queenan, "the greatness expected of us never materialized, in part because we never stopped telling ourselves how great we were." "To my way of thinking," Queenan asserts, "the term 'Baby Boomer' describes a mind-set as much as it defines a demographic group." But, he briefly wonders, "in assigning general characteristics to Baby Boomers (epic self-absorption, staggering greed, a fiendish obsession with staying young, generally dreadful hair) am I not perhaps casting too wide a net?" The answer, he concludes, is No! While Queenan acknowledges "statistically relevant subsets" --African-American Boomers, Hispanic Boomers, Boomers who voted for Nixon--he isn't losing any sleep over the distinction. "Not every Boomer dropped acid or opposed the bombing of Cambodia and Hanoi," he concedes, "...But every Baby Boomer is pathologically self-absorbed. Every Baby Boomer adamantly refuses to grow up." Queenan decodes the book's title by further characterizing Boomers as a generation that once collectively vowed never to become as materialistic as their parents, yet who are now comfortable discussing their choice of basil for their pesto, being very particular about the type of balsamic vinegar to use in their cooking and which rice to use in making paella. In short, says he, "they surrendered their utopian visions of peace, love and understanding and traded them in for 'balsamic dreams.'" Queenan is at his best with wry riffs like his accounts of people and events that "irretrievably sent Baby Boomers hurtling down the wrong path." Among the more infamous: February 12, 1998: Democrats vociferously defend Bill Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky scandal even though they know what a creep he is. "From this point on voting Democratic no longer had any moral or philosophical underpinnings. It was merely fashion." In one of the book's cleverest chapters, Queenan savages his generation's "reconfiguring and reupholstering history" to render it politically correct. The alternative history of the United States he has devised is "told as things might have turned out had Baby Boomer values flowered at an earlier point in our national adventure." This includes, for instance, the notion that by 1645, a permanent colony has been established in English America "by entrepreneurs who turn marijuana into a cash crop." This labor-intensive enterprise tempts them to import slaves from Africa to help harvest the crop. Dissuaded on moral grounds by religious leaders, the planters "invite 400,000 Africans to come to work the fields, identifying them on immigration forms as 'nannies.'" And of the recent past? Queenan continues his irreverent look at how history might have turned out had "the original values and attitudes associated with Baby Boomers taken root." This would include all men able to grow them, sporting ponytails, and earrings. "What are you," he asks, "Long John Silver?" No history of Queenan's generation (and mine) is complete without assessing Baby Boomers' roles in Vietnam. Thus, that conflict is an inevitable subtext running quietly in the background throughout Balsamic Dreams. After all, the cultural rift Vietnam opened between Boomers who answered the call and those who avoided military service, or thought service dishonorable, has never completely closed. For every laid-back, member of the Peace-and-Love wing of the Boomer generation--which Queenan identifies with--there were those "statistically relevant subsets" who took their chances at getting shot up or blown out of the sky because they believed in their country, or couldn't get into college, or on a plane bound for Canada. "Opposed to the conflict on moral grounds at the time" [Boomers] now fear that they missed out on a wonderful bonding experience by not doing their military service," posits Queenan. "Baby Boomers seek to atone for not going to Vietnam by making semi-annual pilgrimages to Gettysburg, usually with a child named Cole in tow. Then they come back and talk about man's inhumanity to man, the senselessness of it all." But this self-satisfied guilt trip doesn't cut it, even when played for laughs. As Marine combat vet, James Webb, sees it: "Having placed their bets-and bet their place in American history-on the supposedly benign intentions of the Vietnamese communists, their response to the Stalinist reality that befell Vietnam in 1975 was to push ever harder to discredit U.S. involvement in the war." While Queenan agrees with Richard Cohen's revisionist take on Clinton, he could have cranked it up a notch. For many of us, our generation has been overrun with hypocritical Marxists persistently pedaling an elitist--Socialist agenda seemingly designed to undermine our country. It's Clinton/Gore versus Bush; blue states versus red states; CNN versus The Fox News Channel! Ridicule that! Read this book; you'll enjoy it. Queenan is a genuinely funny guy and knows his subject. But, a word of advice: Leave politics at the doorstep when speaking with members of the "Me Generation." You never know what you may find. It often ain't pretty.
Rating: 
Summary: A Fun-House Mirror of a Book
Review: What Queenan does is hold up a mirror so that we Boomers can see ourselves, and yes, what he shows us is ugly, but it's hilarious to see ourselves through his distorted lens. You will recognize yourself, your friends, and your relatives. And if you appreciate mean humor, you will have a big grin on your face most of the time you read this. This is a book you will want to share. I want all of my friends and fellow Boomers to read it, because it's such fun. I want my father to read it, so that he can see his offspring put into proper perspective. And I really hope that the individuals that Queenan uses to illustrate particularly vile aspects of our smug self-importance read the book and recognize themselves. But it's about all of us Boomers, and all of us will enjoy a good squirm when we read this. The man is funny. This book will bring you pleasure. If it doesn't, you are seriously humor-impaired, and should pass it along to a less handicapped friend, who will then owe you a big favor. Buy this book.
Rating:
Summary: Self-Important, Indeed.
Review: Mundane observations, however artfully rendered, are still mundane observations. And the rendering certainly is artful. But throughout my reading of the book--and I'm not of the generation Queenan criticizes--I was left with the thought, "Hey, guy, as if you're any better." Worse, the book is at times contradictory. For example, contrast page 118 (the single most important American during the period 1900 to 1950 was FDR, born in 1882) with page 119, directly facing it (detailing the worthlessness of the generation born in 1880). If you're looking for a screed laced with interesting and eclectic references, this is for you. (Funny how Queenan rails against Dennis Miller.) But if you're looking for an honest evaluation of the Boomers' place in history, move on: The Boomers are for the most part greedy, self-important, and dull, as Queenan states. But what he fails to recognize is that these traits are constants throughout human history. The Boomers are just like my generation or any other.
Rating:
Summary: No thanks
Review: Mr. Queenan spends his time making the case that baby boomers are superficial and self-important (with the notable exception of himself). He employs an abrasive style that tends to substitute insults in place of wit or insight. Mr. Queenan also seems to have a penchant for dumping on other writers who are more talented than he is; talk about a full-time job.
Rating:
Summary: Scathing look at the Baby Boomer generation
Review: BALSAMIC DREAMS is a pretty scathing indictment of the Baby Boomer generation -- all the more scathing, and all the more funny, because it seems totally true. Sure, Queenan is a bit obsessed with the devolution of '60s rock into "soft" rock, but when he tells the story about the SUV-driving, cell-phone-talking guy who drives his purebred dog to antoher neighborhood to poop on stranger's lawns while he follows at doggie pace in the gas-guzzling monstrosity, you can't help but think, "I know that guy! And he sucks."
Yes, Baby Boomers collectively suck, and it's nice to hear a fellow Boomer stand up and declare it. They're bankrupting future generations, destroying the environment, and displaying an unprecedented amount of selfishness and self-absorption. Worse yet, they totally sold out, yet they won't admit it! (The only part of Queenan's book I don't really agree with is the diatribe against Gen X'ers -- afer all, as a tiny generation sandwiched between Baby Boomers and their obnoxious offspring, Generation Y-ine, what chance did we have?)
Rating:
Summary: Everything you never wanted to know about Joe Queenan...
Review: Mr. Queenan, as usual, comes off as a self-absorbed schoolyard bully whose primary function is to bray loudly and belittle others. Some of his observations might raise a chuckle at a cocktail party, but nothing in this utterly unnecessary book is thought-provoking or substantial. It's a sign of the debased values of our age that such ramblings get published. The root of his problem appears on p. 190: "Baby Boomers grew up believing that Republicans were greedy, self-absorbed people with breathtakingly bad taste in clothes and music, and who weren't really comfortable around minorities. Today, that describes just about everyone in my age group."
No, Mr. Queenan, it does not. It describes a middle-aged mediocrity who is disappointed in himself and doesn't have the guts to do anything about it.
Mr. Queenan has much in common with Fran Lebowitz, another chronic underachiever whose celebrity as a "writer" should baffle the most undemanding reader. Like Queenan, Lebowitz relies too heavily on parallel structure to create the illusion of style; like Lebowitz, Queenan displays a neurotic compulsion to compile lists. Reading Balsamic Dreams is a bit like reading the recent Vanity Fair outpourings of Ms. Lebowitz: one is indulging a spoiled child up long past his/her bedtime.
Enough. Mr. Queenan, you have a certain knack for being a "writer." But you are too old to be precocious, and it's time you removed those inverted commas.
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