How do you define a generation while they're still in their prime? Though the subject deserves to be tackled in essay form, and has certainly inspired many an essayist and blogger, we may have to turn to a bulleted list right now just in the interest of time and outlining. It's a complicated subject, and on some level, especially when it comes to relating the generation to John Hughes, it starts to feel like it's about class -- specifically that Gen X, as it's been defined, is a white middle-class phenomenon. But it's not.

We suppose that a generation's defining characteristics arrive, necessarily, from their cultural output. With filmmakers like John Hughes, Richard Linklater, and John Singleton; writers like David Foster Wallace, Dave Eggers, and A.M. Homes; and musicians like Kurt Cobain, Eminem, and The Smiths, one starts to see a specific picture emerge that's about non-conformity, disaffection, and a search for authenticity.  But weren't most of those characteristics also true of the Boomers who became hippies? The true defining edge for Gen X might then have to be irony, humor, and not a small degree of cynicism inherited from the failed revolution that preceded us.

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