Remediating Generational Deficiencies and the American Caste System in "Rich Boy"

I'm going to make this blog short because I'm pretty swamped, but I'd like to begin by saying that the whole notion of blogging is actually so provocative for me: once I start in the colloquial, journalesque tone of  my blogs, my thoughts on whatever book we are reading seem to flow out, multiply, and reform themselves all at once.

Sharon Pomerantz novel "Rich Boy," is the story of a first generation college student trying to create a better life for himself.  While I am not a first or even second generation college student, I think that Robert's struggle in the novel is one that is deeply resonant with many graduates.  Robert, through colloquial and well-rendered dialogue, desires to overcome what he saw as the hardships of his past.  In his case, his childhood was deformed by relative poverty, always having to penny pinch, and live in the homogenized world of the not- quite- totally-defunct-but-almost lower class.  For all of us however, regardless of whether we come from Robert's circumstances or other's, I tend to think that we all, as increasingly individualized selves, are all just trying to surpass something from our parent's sphere of influence, and make a life for ourselves that is always striving to be better than the last.

"Rich Boy" and Stereotypes of Jewish Identities on the Conflicted Self

Sharon Pomerantz's novel Rich Boy captures the trajectory of young Robert's life as he moves between spaces defined by different ethnic and economic landscapes and illuminates how these spacial shifts impact and mutate his identity and sense of self.  In class, we discussed the possibility that perhaps, Robert is searching for an identity without "shame," perhaps leading him to deny at times, or at least suppress, his Jewish roots.

 I found this possibility to be very intriguing, especially in light of the group presentation we watched on Monday as well.  I personally come from a town that is roughly 40% Jewish--a very high percentage and one that is growing.  Growing up, many of my friends were Jewish; I even had one friend convince me that being Jewish was more fun than being Christian, and I left her house crying and begging my mom to sign our family up to be Jewish at, ironically, the YMCA, where at the time I thought you could register for everything.  Westport never has school on Yom Kippur or Rosh Hashana, we never got homework on passover or on the Hannukah days that fell during the school year.  I attended 27 Bar and Bat Mitzvahs between seventh and eighth grade, and probably would have gone to more had they not coincided with others on the same weekend. In fact, I attended both Orthodox and conservative synagogues more than I did church between 2001 and 2002. In essence, the presence of Judaism in my childhood was dominant, but not in an overwhelming way, just in a sense that it was a basic facet of normalcy growing up.


For this reason, it took me a while to fully grasp the concept of Antisemitism.  All the Jewish girls were the cool ones.  Their Bat Mitzvahs constituted awesome parties while my confirmation was austere and without fanfare.  I could not possibly conceive why anyone would complain about their Jewish roots or how anyone in the outside world could see Jews as a scapegoat.  I think with this mindset, growing up with the notion that Judaism was "cool," it is interesting to read about Robert's complicated and often negating relationship to his Jewish roots.  Ultimately however, I think that Robert's attempt at detachment is one that, at its origins, is not intrinsically linked to Judaism or any specific factor.  Instead, I think the relationship of anyone, Robert or otherwise, to their childhood, and the shaping pressures of the past, are inevitably a universal source of anxiety, especially in relation to the formation of selfhood.  In the end, it is only when Robert can reconcile his Jewish self with an understanding of his present sense of self that he is able to find balance in his life.

The Beatles "Money" and Values in Anisha Lakani's "Schooled"

Prior to one of our discussions of Anisha Lakani's novel, Schooled, we as a class listened to a number of songs, one of which was The Beatles' song "Money".  The song, while catchy, is an important and revealing anthem for the warping of material values and perspectives in society--a theme also resonant throughout Schooled.

In "Money," the lyrics of the first three verses are as follows:

The best things in life are free
But you can keep 'em for the birds and bees.
Now gimme money (that's what I want)
That's what I want (that's what I want)
That's what I want (that's what I want), oh-yeh,
That's what I want.

Your lovin' give me a thrill
But your lovin' don't pay my bills.
Now gimme money (that's what I want)
That's what I want (that's what I want)
That's what I want (that's what I want), oh-yeh,
That's what I want.

Money don't get everything it's true.
What it don't get I can't use.
Now gimme money (that's what I want)
That's what I want (that's what I want)
That's what I want (that's what I want), oh yeh,
That's what I want.


Like I said, the song and its tune are catchy and fun, but the lyrics, especially when written down, are dark and objectively troubling.  The idea that money can be more important than love, or happiness, or any other intangible facet of life I often think of as being beyond economization, is tragic, and in my opinion, represents a warped set of values and perspectives on money.


In Lakani's Schooled, main character Anna takes on this sort of mindset as she becomes sucked into the vortex of elite society, extreme wealth, and consuming greed.  Interestingly enough for me, it was the combination of both hearing the song and reading the novel that sort of helped me extract this sense of value mutation as transcendent and transformative. 


 I was actually prompted to analyze this notion further after watching a documentary in my Anthropology class called "Born Rich," a film made by Jamie Johnson, an heir to the Johnson and Johnson fortune.  In the film, Jamie interviews his friends who happen to all be heirs to private fortunes and live in New York City.  In essence, he and his friends, boys and girls who attended private academies like Chapin, Collegiate, Choate, St. Paul's, and Nightingale-Bamford to name a few, eerily mimic the world Lakani captures in her novel.  At one point, Luke Weil, an heir to a billion dollar gaming fortune states, "the thought of losing my money is really like trying to imagine a parent or sibling dying. You just cant."  While frighteningly shallow, Weil's allocation of money as a part of the family, as part of his identity from birth, speaks in an organic and powerful way to the transformative power of money in the novel, the song, and in real life.