New York Times - Jul 11, 2003
THE AGE OF DISSONANCE
Gifted Youth: A Blight
By BOB MORRIS

A college friend returned recently from an out-of-town gig sounding giddy and sheepish. He had fallen in love with a 24-year-old Ivy League graduate. I was livid. How dare a brainy kid do that to a helpless middle-aged man? "She's so smart and so verbal," my friend said.

I said it sounded as if he was describing a toddler, not a lover, and refused to meet her.

Oy, youth. Not only has it gotten into bed with Demi Moore (Ashton Kutcher, her new boyfriend, is 25, she's 40), now it's oozing into my personal space.

The July issue of the usually mature Vanity Fair devotes endless pages to deifying teenage stars as if they were so many Athenas and Demeters. Well, they do seem like immortals, even if I can't tell them apart. How could I when there are so many?

Even the young are complaining about the young. "What really annoys me is how soft their skin looks," said Lucinda Rosenfeld, all of 33, whose first novel came out three years ago.

But youth's beauty is an old issue. The new annoyance is how talented and well received the newcomers are. We've seen the 25-year-old novelist Jonathan Safran Foer publish Everything Is Illuminated to wild acclaim, and J. T. Leroy, at 23 the author of Sarah and The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things, has inspired a cult following. Then there's Nick McDonell, who published his novel Twelve while in high school.

"I understand that I am 18," he told BBC Radio, "and that is saleable." Not to mention assailable. But why? Perhaps because the successes of the young remind us that we haven't succeeded the way we had hoped. Middle age? It turns out to be about accepting diminished expectations rather than Oscars. "He who is of a calm and happy nature," Plato said, "will hardly feel the pressure of age." Do you know anyone like that in this town?

Seasoned fashion designers have to stay calm reading raves about Zac Posen, an outspoken darling at 22. Struggling cabaret singers have a 20-year-old poster boy, Peter Cincotti, to ponder; he was the youngest headliner to play the Oak Room in the Algonquin in 100 years. Norah Jones, 24, won five Grammies last spring. Avril Lavigne didn't win any, but she's 18, so she still has a year or so to develop to her full potential.

"You gasp and think, `They're half my age,'" said Brett Easton Ellis, whose novel Less Than Zero, published in 1985 when he was 23, made people say the same about him. Now in the post-wunderkind phase of his career, he can only ask, like others, "How did that happen?"

Who knows? Maybe it's because children brought up to be seen and heard, as they are these days, start having worthwhile observations to make before they're able to legally buy a drink. "Maybe we're actually smarter than you," my niece, Madeleine, 11, told me, "because we haven't destroyed any of our brain cells yet."

So what's to be done? Well, if we want to be mean, there's solace to be taken from a study in The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, which shows that people who achieve early success die sooner than those who achieve it (or hope to) in their golden years. We might also cheer ourselves up by speculating on how Cameron Diaz, Drew Barrymore and Lucy Liu must have seethed when Demi Moore upstaged them at their Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle premiere with her hot young boyfriend.

But since we're mature, maybe another approach is warranted. Should we actually (gasp) read the books we're grumbling about? Is it possible the critics were right to praise them? Is it possible that Norah Jones has grace and wisdom beyond her years?

"I don't care how young someone is, it's the work that matters," said Mr. Ellis, who is wise, if not yet wizened, at 38. "There's nothing you can do but just get older."

And wiser, too, despite ourselves. After grousing, I agreed to meet the young girlfriend of my middle-aged college friend. She was lovely, even if she teased him by asking, "Dad, can I have a cigarette?"

"Hey, you have to expect a 24-year-old to be a little immature," he said.

Who knows? By 44, she may even grow up to become a big baby like the rest of us.