You’ve had a great life.
You settled down young, had a couple kids in the suburbs. Maybe you climbed the corporate ladder, or built a thriving small business vital to the community. You’re not rich, but “comfortable” — comfortable enough to send your kids to that prestigious private research college they spent their formative years preparing for. You gave them the world in the best way you knew how, and sure, there were sacrifices — but as they set off to New York, or D.C. or LA, diploma in hand, you felt confident in their ticket to a life bigger and better than you, perhaps somewhat regrettably, ever envisioned for yourself.
So at 20-something, why are they now so miserable?
Meet Ross Mathcamp, protagonist of Matthew Davis’s debut novel Let Me Try Again. Mathcamp’s increasingly desperate schemes to win back his ex-girlfriend spin a unique parable of Gen-Z‘s self-imposed misery in the 21st century. When his doting parents die in a freak helicopter accident, Ross uses his newfound life insurance wealth to prove to her that he’s the “very normal adult” of her dreams. (Click here to watch Daily Caller documentary ‘Selling Sex’)
Davis paints the all-too-common psychological portrait of today’s disgruntled youth that has no real reason to be so. Ross might be your son, your grandson; He’s the 23 year-old Everyman of the modern, urban, Very-Online world. He’s well aware of how smart, perceptive and ambitious he is — all hallmarks of the perfectly coddled upbringing that ought to ensure him a happy life. That’s exactly what he has on paper, if the luxury New York City apartment is anything to go by. Yet he’s stunted, disaffected, narcissistic and miserable, and in thinking he’s special, fails to see he’s a product of the culture he wants so badly to reject.
Ross is exceptional relative to the rest of his generation. He’s meticulously tidy, obsessively health-conscious, well-read and holds down a practical career as male nurse. He’s certainly more sensible than his hard-partying girlfriend Lora, whom he breaks up with at the beginning of the book hoping she’ll realize the error of her ways and come crawling back, ready to embrace a “mature” relationship. He scoffs at the aimless dandy she takes up with instead; while handsome and cool by contemporary standards, Ross rightly perceives him as a timeless “loser.” Yet he’s disillusioned by the non-Lora alternatives: the bimbo he sleeps with as a rebound, a vapid corporate drone who drops her panties after one tacky themed date — a stand-in for today’s ubiquitous young Girl Bosses.
The overall religious composition of religion by generation is relatively unchanged from prior years, as well.
Among Millennials: 44% are nones. 42% are Protestant or Catholic.
Among Gen Z: 48.5% are nones. 35% are Protestant or Catholic.
3/6 pic.twitter.com/Cp5Kczikqx
— Ryan Burge 📊 (@ryanburge) April 3, 2023
So Ross doesn’t fit into the modern paradigm, but he rejects the bourgeois mores of his parents’ generation as well. His dear deceased parents meant well, but in his mind, they were unsophisticated and provincial; they enjoyed only “low culture” and didn’t even know how to invest in ETFs! Meanwhile, Ross is well invested and reads, you know, philosophy. He thinks this makes him an exemplary mentor for his younger sister, Emily, but is resentful when she discovers her own intellectual bearings without him.
So who is Ross? Even he doesn’t know.
Like much of today’s youth, he’s obsessed with feeling like an adult, but only pretends to know how. He thinks the answer lies in rejecting all the conventional trends he sees around him, embracing his own neurotic form of performative maturity and quasi-sophistication. Yet this self-conception is entirely negative. Wrapped up in the idea of being better than everyone he interacts with, he can only define himself against something. It makes him perpetually disappointed (why can’t everyone see how stupid they are, how right and “mature” I am?!), but it’s an identity that he desperately clings to, because what’s the alternative? If he admits his worldview leaves him just as unfulfilled, immature and unsophisticated as he perceives everyone else, then perhaps he’s not as exceptional as he thinks.
So he places all of his hopes on Lora, that winning her back will validate his sincere belief that he is, in fact, right about everything. He wants to show her that he’s mature enough for her to take him back, even though she gives no indication that maturity is what she’s looking for. So in the end, all that matters is the lie he tells himself: Rather than actually trying to evolve, he relies on superficial tricks to win her back. The thematic refrain of “Let Me Try Again” echoes with each failed scheme, and he remains the same old nebbish Ross, simply in a different costume. Maybe his little sister is right after all; he scoffs at her embrace of doctrinaire Catholicism, but at least she’s rooted in something.
Ross is ultimately not that far off the mark. As a 20-something myself, his diagnosis is correct: Our culture sucks, our contemporaries are idiots and our parents, as great as they are, imparted a worldview on us that is no longer practical for navigating the modern world. But there’s no use in wallowing too much, because it only makes his prescription veer far off course.
Ross’s, and I suspect Davis’s, overarching gripe is that we live in a meaningless culture, rooted in nothing, where people act accordingly. Yet that critique, real as it is, can’t be fought with more of the same. Ross tries so hard to cut against the grain – of modern culture, of his parents – he fails to see how this becomes his own biggest obstacle. Saying it’s all shit and doing the opposite in a reactionary knee jerk is just as meaningless – fighting a nihilistic culture with an ultimately nihilistic anti-culture. The only way to figure out who you really are is to grab hold of an anchor – perhaps, but not exclusively, religion – and mold yourself and your fulfillment around it. Ross is smart, but I’ll leave it to the reader to discover if he’s smart enough to figure this out.
Davis’ real victory is getting this all across with sharp, fun prose, witty references and often laugh-out-loud moments. As unbearable as he is, you end up rooting for Ross, as you zoom through 300 eminently readable pages. Once you’re in, you’re hooked. In the end, you’re left with ample insight into the laughably damaged psyche of the most coddled and comfortable generation in history. But as neurotic and fragile as they are, you’re left with a glimmer of hope. The kids are not alright, but they will be … ugh, probably.
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