Earn Don't Follow Me, I'm Lost: A Memoir Of Hampshire College In The Twilight Of The '80s Rendered By Richard Rushfield Exhibited In Booklet

College, hidden out in the woods of New England, is the liberal answer to any standardissue southern Christian college and just as frightening.
Imagine a place where forming a fraternity is actually considered a subversive act, I read Richard Rushfield's memoir of this college in the last half of thes with equal parts humor and horror.
Like some kind of gleeful imp, Rushfield set out to push the boundaries of the college's "It's all good" philosophy and in so doing, exposes them for the rigid traditionalists they really are down deep.
Don't you DARE ring the ceremonial bell before it's allowed,

I wondered just how much of the sanctimonious nature of the student body was real and how much was authorial exaggeration/interpretation and then I came to Goodreads and read the review of this book by Paxton Lee.
I now believe it was all true, And that terrifies me. the Mishima of Melancholy, Rushfield has cultivated a wonderfully insulting comedy of manners under the leaden skies of Northhampton Oblast during the addled eighties.
This unbildungsroman really brought me back, unwillingly, to a time when mind could fool the body that it was having fun.
I can't wait for the uplifting sequel, Guerrilla Acapella, Readpages and stopped. Rare for me, but I was just hating it: I kept thinking "it wasn't like that!" although maybe it was when he was there.
I hope that sometime between pageand the end of the book, the author transforms from clueless slacker to creative and responsible human being redemption! narrative arc!, but I was not compelled to find out for myself.
Maybe I'll come back to it another time, but most likely not I had my own experience at Hampshire, and there are too many wonderful other books out there to read.
This would have probably gottenif I were a guy could've related a bit more.
That being said, the music references and humour definitely made it an entertaining read, The demographic would definitely be theup crowd, Richard Rushfields memoir, “Dont Follow Me, Im Lost” details his years spent at Hampshire College during the lates/ earlys.
I simply did not buy into his story at all, It felt like someone who was recalling a series of events that over the years grew more monumental in his own mind.
I also think they are stories that are far more interesting to the people who were actually there, rather than the reader.
I felt like I was reading a bunch of inside jokes that I just didnt get.


Rushfield explains that Hampshire was a very experimental college, I get it. I have done the small liberal arts college thing, In fact, my experience at Bard, included a very odd class registration process that seems would have fit right in as part of Rushfields college experience.
I just didnt buy into the extremes of Rushfields story, It was too much. It was also not very interesting to read, If youre going to be outlandish, at least be entertaining,
To the author of "Don't Follow Me, I'm Lost: A Memorior of Hampshire College in the Twilight of the's": you entered Hampshireyears before I did, and yet everything you describe is incredibly familiar, if not of my own experience, then of someone I knew.
Holy crap. Something things or institutions never change, as much as they try, I really, really want this book to be a movie, because I want to absorb the hilarious absurdity of Richard's book in more than one medium.
This is the anticollege memoir, if you will, where those who suggest wet Tshirt parties are equated with fascists and rapists.
It'll make you want to join a frat, even if you're a girl, I know this isn't a very helpful review but you just have to read it to enjoy it, especially if you have a hankering to read about an alternate universe where the putupon are the bullies and life is generally bizarre.
Sounded very intriguing and relatable for anyone who's gone to college: those first tastes of freedom, bonding with new and lifelong friends, discovering who you really are.
But then Richard Rushfield decides to turn this memoir into one long stoner fest, The junkies that he hangs out with don't do much but lie around and talk about doing things.
Seriously, an entire chapter is devoted to whether or not they should go to Denny's, No matter how "funny" their inertia or immaturity were supposed to be, I just kept waiting for them to get expelled.
What could've been a very wild ride through this alternative, experimental, nearly restrictionless college of thes doesn't get beyond a few pranks gone wrong.
It's nothing you haven't heard of before, Extremely entertaining but not exactly transcendent, Definitely a good read for anyone who attended a small liberal arts college and lived to tell the tale.
While the Hampshire experience seems a little more extreme and implausible than my own as presented in this book, I definitely could relate to the various factions of students who claimed openmindedness but frequently clashed with each other.




I was around for much of what went on in this entertaining and endearing book "Meg".


Before reading it, I read in the promo blurb that the Hampshire student body hated the Dicks and friends.
I was like, really Its possible, No wait, I think I knew that at the time, Did I No, that can't be true, I was scared to read it, paranoid that Rich would write something embarrassing about me,

Hampshire was comprised mostly of smart, dynamic, diligent students whose brains and accomplishments are absolutely respectful.
The Hampshire administration can tell you about them, Richard did well in his finalyears there but that would not an amusing tale make, and that's not what this book is about.
Its about his first two years spent "creative floundering" discovering what you are passionate about, And, the socializing one experiences at college usually the first time anyear old lives independent of parents.


But first, the nonaccurate, IMHO:
Richard mentions a rumor that the Dicks cheered on the kid who drank cyanide laced cool aid as part of a performance on a campus TV broadcast.
I never heard that rumor, I was not inside the TV studio, but I do not believe anyone cheered him on.
The Dicks were were dicks but not that dickish,
I don't think Steve tookyears to graduate,
Re: the "graffiti sign" incident the language on the sign that he quotes I believe is somewhat inaccurate.
From what I heard, the grafitti was even funnier than what he writes, If the school had showed the sign to anyone, it would have beenobvious that it was a sarcastic, PARODY of political incorrectness! Think: Daily Show or Bill Maher mocking PC'ness.
The school never told the student body what the graffiti said! Oh, and he left out a funny tidbit that when one of the students who was forced to write a public apology submitted it to the administration, they made this person edit out the phrase "black cloud", as in the incident cast a black cloud over the campus.
The administration thought this sounded racist!

OK, now the accurate:

Yeah, I'd say its an accurate depiction of modlife.


Weirder and crazier shit was also going on at the time that is not in this book and I suppose was not a part of RR's intimate experience there.
But, Richard could have exploited some other fucked up antics and behavior but did not, Thank you, RR!

I thought the Dicks were brilliant at the time, Well, their and my films were brilliant, Conceptually, so was their music, Emphasis on "conceptually. " Think: John Cage as an arty, postpunkyear old in thes,

I thought everyone in the Pioneer Valley saw our nocturnal clan as The Artists and Philosophers of the school, if not the world.
I thought people respected us for what they were incapable of doing, You know. Why be conventional and boring when you could be avant garde Hmm Yeah, I actually thought this shit.
I was young and naive, I was mean at times to people who were "Normal" I remember now, and

I feel just terrible about it.
What was I thinking Oh, I remember now, . . I was angry due to a fucked up childhood in sheltered middle America, Where American punk and thrash came from

I think my/our generation was notoriously unprepared for the real world.
I'm OK now, don't worry, Our prebaby boomer parents were unenlightened to things like expression of emotions and doing what makes you happy.
They were still running on some kind of's way of seeing the world, It sucks to be raised by that, I think the generations before and after us got better deals the baby boomers were happy saving the world and growing their personal wealth, and their offspring had the benefit of communicative, involved parenting.


In this respect, the book can be seen as socioanthropological examination of the marginalized Generation X.
I could be wrong. I was no American Studies major, Which reminds me that most HC graduates seem to go on to grad school, The consensus is that grad school is loads easier than Hampshire too, btw,

Also, this book takes place in the days just beveryone ate Prozac like candy.
I wonder how the recent prevalence of ADD meds and antidepressants has changed the student culture landscape in the years after I was a student.
I wonder if they are bunch of wellbehaved good student zombies, How boring that would be,

OK, I have to go to the gym now, Good lord I am such a normal, bourgeoisie pig now, Whatever. Read the book its a hoot! i am a moron, when i first signed up to win this from goodreads, com. i thought "yay it will have stories of donna tartt and tales about what a douche bret easton ellis is/was", because my mind equated the entire state of new hampshire, including bennington, with hampshire college.
and i am a new england girl, i even knew people performance artists, naturally who went to hampshire.
so once my brain righted itself, i settled in to enjoy the book anyway, hampshire is an admirable conceptcollege, that unfortunately few teens are equipped to take advantage of, i think i would love it now except for the hippie "have a cause, save the world" side of itbut as a kid.
. . that kind of freedom i dont think i would have ended up like the author cloistered in a foulsmelling cockroachinfested living area with thirty other lethargic philosophyspouting people despised by the rest of the campus, never going to class, and committing acts of social terrorism, but i might have been less inclined to go to class if i didnt really have to.
this book really captured the time period well, and i enjoyed laughing at the author who is now of course a successful writer while i for all my traditional goingtoclass college life, am not.
sigh if the publisher is at all interested in "Typos I Have Found" in the ARC, lemme know.
second attempt at review first inexplicably erased, fingers crossed. .