First edition cover, clearly taking cues from Nine Inch Nails' The Downward Spiral.
Harsh Generation, often stylized in all lowercase letters ("harsh generation") is the debut novel of Damien Blake, published through E. Whipple Publishing House in 2021. It is an unnerving glimpse into teen life in the early stage of The New '10s, particularly within alternative subcultures.
Largely plotless, the narrative is told entirely through stream-of-consciousness style, and follows the life of a nameless protagonist, roughly corresponding to the span of a year. Initially, the chapters are dedicated to the night-time debauchery of the teen protagonist and his circle of friends, alongside his girlfriend Jane, who suffers from an unspecified mental illness. The story grows increasingly darker and more bizarre, with the characters degenerating into abject nihilism, self-abuse, and drug addiction.
The novel is notable primarily for the relentless pessimism with which it treats its sensitive subject matter, and for the haunting apathy the characters exhibit in response to the traumatic events they witness.
The e-book version was released exclusively through Amazon Kindle on May 2021.
Tropes featured in Harsh Generation
- Adults Are Useless: There's not a single responsible adult around. Every named character is a minor left unsupervised to their own devices.
- Book Ends: The novel's last sentence is the initial part of the opening one, which starts with its latter part, signifying the characters are trapped in a perpetual cycle of abuse.
- Break the Haughty: The protagonist starts off as arrogant, but by the end of the novel he has been reduced to a shell of a person."There are ashes inside me that cannot again burn."
- Butt-Monkey: Markus is treated like shit by everyone around him, primarily his "friends." In contrast to other characters, he is depicted as somewhat naive, but still comes off as a pretty horrible person. He pretty much disappears from the story following his break-up with Catherine.
- Cluster F-Bomb: Everyone peppers their dialogue with extreme crassness to appear edgier.
- Costume Porn: The clothing descriptions and fashion aesthetic are worthy of American Psycho and My Immortal respectively.
- Dark and Troubled Past: The three main girlfriends (Jane, Sonia, Hope) are all heavily implied to have one.
- Downer Ending: The narrator has a mental breakdown lasting months, engaging in extremely self-destructive behaviour and driving away most of his peers, who are as vapid and miserable as he is. Hope is all but stated to be a figment of his imagination, although this is left up to the reader. Worse still, the structure of the novel implies the story will just be repeated...
- Fan Disservice: The sexual exploits of the protagonist are described in extreme detail, but they are too sad, creepy, or non-consensual (or all of the above) to provide genuine Fanservice.
- Gainax Ending: The novel ends midsentence, and none of the various subplots have been resolved.
- Hard Truth Aesop: A person can go through extreme, traumatic events, without learning any moral lessons in the process, or improving themselves in any way.
- Hate Sink: Nathan seems to get a lot of hate for being perverted, crass, pretentious, and dumb as a bag of bricks.
- Madden Into Misanthropy: The point of the story, really.
- Manic Pixie Dream Girl: Deconstructed viciously. Hope is initially presented as this archetype, but as the story goes on she becomes more unhinged.
- Meta Fiction: Midway through the novel, the protagonist begins writing an autobiographical novel, curiously also titled Harsh Generation. He mentions in passing that he probably won't come around to finishing it, hinting at the recursive nature of the narrative.
- Mind Screw: The narrative gradually turns disorganised, blending hallucinations with real-life events. The characters occasionally offer odd comments about being fictional entities. The final chapters of the book are mostly incoherent vignettes.
- Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Nero. He is an elusive figure that only appears twice throughout the novel's 400-page run, and both times he manages to be as unsettling as possible. One interpretation is that he is the physical embodiment of evil.
- No Ending: The novel forms a perfect circle, in that the first and last lines form a complete sentence, indicating the characters are trapped in a perpetual cycle of abuse.
- No Name Given: We never find out the protagonist's name. A common theme is that he is interrupted everytime he attempts to introduce himself.
- Postmodernism: Unreliable antihero? Check. Conflicting, dreamlike narrative? Check. The protagonist casually penning his memoir, which has the same title as the novel itself, crossed-out passages, and the story being a constant cycle? Check, check, check.
- Seinfeldian Conversation: The cast spends around one-third of the novel discussing inane topics ad nauseam, such as hang-out spots and teenage drama.
- Shout-Out: See Small Reference Pools. The novel's title is a tribute to an album by industrial act Grendel. This is confirmed by the narrator himself, when he begins working on the novel-within-the-novel, which bears the same title. There are entire pages that consist of nothing more than lists of whatever latest entertainment the characters have consumed. While these are explicit references, there are numerous subtler ones, particularly to works of literature.
- Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: Firmly lodged in the farthest end of the cynical side, with no looking back.
- Small Reference Pools: Averted. The novel includes a hurricane of references to music acts, films, video games, and fashion brands, all ranging from the relatively mainstream to the wildly obscure.
- The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You: At pivotal points, the narrator will address the reader directly." Maybe this world is a mirror. And we are you."
- Unconventional Formatting: The book features crossed-out sections, idiosyncrating punctuation, and sentences that stop abruptly.
- Unreliable Narrator: Most certainly. There are entire chapters that are implied to be nothing more than drug-induced hallucinations.
