Typical of the Times: Growing Up in the Culture of Spectacle/What Was the Question Again?

Typical of the Times: Growing Up in the Culture of Spectacle is a riveting stream of consciousness memoir from Jaime Clarke about coming of age during the Age of Spectacle, when technological advances brought pop culture tragicomedy to the masses, binding us all with common experiences and memories—whether we wanted to experience them or not. The drumbeat of these experiences builds from the controversy over the resignation of the newly-minted Miss America Vanessa Williams over her appearance in Penthouse through the Challenger explosion and on through to the spectacle of the contested 2000 Presidential election, ending with the calamity of September 11. Along the way, Clarke recounts his upbringing in Arizona and his aspirations to become a writer, which take him to Bennington College in Vermont and ultimately to New York City. Equal parts horrifying and horrifyingly honest, Typical of the Times is the definitive Generation X memoir.

What Was the Question Again? by Charlie Martens, the antihero of the trilogy of novels Vernon Downs, World Gone Water, and Garden Lakes by Jaime Clarke, carries on the tradition of Michel de Montaigne’s introspective investigations into the expanse of human existence, from the mundane to the deeply profound.

Jaime Clarke is a graduate of the University of Arizona and holds an MFA from Bennington College. He is the author of the novels We're So Famous, Vernon Downs, World Gone Water, and Garden Lakes; editor of the anthologies Don't You Forget About Me: Contemporary Writers on the Films of John Hughes, Conversations with Jonathan Lethem, and Talk Show: On the Couch with Contemporary Writers; and co-editor of the anthologies No Near Exit: Writers Select Their Favorite Work from Post Road Magazine (with Mary Cotton) and Boston Noir 2: The Classics (with Dennis Lehane and Mary Cotton). He is a founding editor of the literary magazine Post Road, now published at Boston College, and co-owner, with his wife, of Newtonville Books, an independent bookstore in Boston.

Charlie Martens is the protagonist of the novels Vernon Downs, World Gone Water, and Garden Lakes by Jaime Clarke.