Bruce Springsteens always doing it in his songs. Maybe not always, but hes done it. You know that one Bobby Jean, off Born in the USA? Anyway, he phones this girl up but shes left town years before and hes pissed off that he didnt know about it, because he wanted to say good-bye, and tell her that he missed her, and to wish her good luck. And then one of those sax solos comes in, and you get goose pimples, if you like sax solos. And Bruce Springsteen. Well, Id like my life to be like a Bruce Springsteen song. Just once. I know Im not born to run. I know that the Seven Sisters Road is nothing like Thunder Road, but feelings cant be so different, can they? Id like to phone all those people up and say good luck, and good-bye, and then theyd feel good and Id feel good. Wed all feel good. That would be good. Great, even.

Nothing is more painful to the human mind than, after the feelings have been worked up by a quick succession of events, the dead calmness of inaction and certainty which follows and deprives the soul both of hope and fear.

"But you have not slept yet, old man," he said aloud. "It is half a day and a night and now another day and you have not slept. You must devise a way so that you sleep a little if he is quiet and steady. If you do not sleep you might become unclear in the head."
I'm clear enough in the head, he thought. Too clear. I am as clear as the stars that are my botheres. Still I must sleep. They sleep and the moon and the sun sleep and even the ocean sleeps sometimes on certain days when there is no currect and a flat calm.

Because if you want to generalize--and merely to converse about the concept of generations we must do so--then let's be honest. None of our wacky cultural traits differentiates us in the least from previous generations of ungrateful, disaffected middle-class whiners. Both Gatsby and Kerouac would recognize us in one drunken glance.