The Unreflected Life Is Not Worth Living

From a November 12, 1997, "San Francisco Bay Guardian" essay on Gen X self-help books including Get a Financial Life, Welcome to the Real World: Now Get a Life!, Frugal Indulgents, Pagan Kennedy's Living, The Rules: Time-Tested Secrets for Capturing the Heart of Mr. Right, and Cook Something: Simple Recipes and Sound Advice to Bring Good Food into Your Fabulous Lifestyle
These books speak to us in our own language.
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We need to be flexible, ready to switch careers, apartments, cities. And we don't have time to waste. We're not too lazy to do things -- fix a bookshelf, cook dinner, decorate -- but we don't want to scour the world for information on how to do them. If we can read about a city and its job market, what its art scene is like, its cost of living, all in 10 pages, that's real knowledge for us.
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We may not be holding up mirrors to our genitalia but we're holding them up to ourselves -- and seeing that we want to be smart and do things right.

From the collection of Ray Davis