The Boomer

by Marty Asher

Meet the boomer. He's smart, successful, well-adjusted, and on the brink of total despair. Sound like anyone you know? boom-er (b?'mer), n. 1: a person or thing that booms. 2: a person who settles in... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0375410090
• ISBN13: 9780375410093
• Release Date: May 2000
• Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
• Length: 160 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.4" x 6.9"

Customer Reviews

A Book for All of Us

Marty Asher has produced a compelling book of 101 paragraph-length chapters which chronicles the life of what we assume to be a typical man of his times - a Boomer. Each chapter is accompanied by a sort of free association illustration which could have been ripped from the pages of any popular magazine in the 1950s. The result is a compelling piece of literature that says in a few words what it has taken John Irving a lifetime to write. The book is really about all of us, however. And how we always have been. In the end Asher's Boomer, while the details of his life are different, reminds one of Hawthorne's wayward Puritans, Sloan Wilson's "Man in the Gray Flannel Suit" and today's Microserfs. Asher pulls it off in an amazing economy of words, almost conversationally, as if someone asked, "What was your father like?" Buy this book, read it and circulate it among your friends. You'll think about it and carry it around in your mind a few days and hopefully it will sink in. And it IS worth buying for the pictures!

the boomer and marty asher the man

As member of Generation Y (maybe, my apathetic generation is more aptly termed Generation Why?), I might not seem like the target customer for a book about baby boomers. Indeed, I am not. I did, however, find the book immensely enjoyable. Mr. Asher, with his vignettes captured my father's quintessence and influenced my own writing. I am an aspiring novelist and his unique brevity has helped me to think outside the constraints of the normal novel. For that, I thank him. After I read his book clandestinely in the back of a bookstore, he came to Powell's Books in Portland, OR. I went to the reading to meet the man. He took the time to talk to me after the reading and when I mentioned jokingly that I would love to buy his book, but that I was too poor(which is completely true- I'm a starving student), he BOUGHT ME THE BOOK! Yes, it is true, the man took money from his own pocket so that I, a complete stranger, could have his book. If that doesn't say something about the man's character, I'm not sure what could.

This book stays with you after you close its covers

Something about this book is chilling, haunting, funny, sarcastic, surreal and enlightning. Here is this book that seems to put the american dream on trial. It makes its point by giving us the life of a successful american businessman. He seems to live the life that we often find advertised on billboards and luxury magazines. So why is he unhappy? Why is he on the verge of "booming" out of his skull? Well, you'll have to read this book to find out. But let me put it this way: Being successful is great, but it doesn't mean diddley squat if you don't have your mind and heart in the right place. These days it seems as if friends and family aren't even there when you need them...except for your dog. It's a tough life. Even for "The Boomers."

A Gem!

This book is a gem! Reminiscent in form of Ken Sparling's "Dad Says He Saw You At The Mall," this eentsy novel is the newest contribution to the genre known as "flash fiction" or "sudden fiction", or, as in the title of Jerome Stern's little book, "Micro-fiction." Chapters only a small page long tell the account of this boomer's life. Every jot and tittle relating to boomers that you've ever heard of is included here. The conceits, the preferences, the loves, the possessions, the pasttimes---they're all tucked into this tale. The main character---the boomer---for all this book is so abbreviated---is somehow oddly quite dimensional. He's also a sad, tragic character, whose life is disappointing, but the book is not. It's an amazing little jewel, a story of today, a sociological study---for better or worse--- of contemporary life. The illustrations are wonderful too.

The Boomer

In 101 tiny chapters of 4-5 sentences each, we follow the quintessential baby boomer from birth to death through childhood pranks, to college experimentation, success as a businessman, his disintegration upon Middle Age, his death and the reaction of his family. This can be read in a matter of minutes, but stays with you long after as a representation of 20th century life. The illustrations add to the pleasure of the book. Once you start, you will almost compulsively race to finish to discover what happens to the Boomer.