In a time in which generations struggle to understand each other, everyone, young and old, is nevertheless in agreement that something has happened to the young. Young people are now consistently more distressed than our elders, a fact whose daily confirmation through experience is the only thing keeping us from recognizing its utter his­torical perversity. Youth has been stripped of its natural tendencies to energy, autonomy, and subversion. In our turning away from life, the generation christened with the albatross of the alphabet’s final letter...