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am wondering if it possible that such silly people existed? i realize they are spoiled brats, its post-war, many of their peers died in the war..what were they doing? have tried to read this book many times because i love Brideshead Revisited and its intensity and the silly people in it are comprehensible albeit religious nuts......finally got through it, did laugh but wondered about the source...

Palmyrah
They certainly existed, and were not one whit sillier than the po-faced young Puritans of today.

The Bright Young Things, at least, had no illusions a…more
They certainly existed, and were not one whit sillier than the po-faced young Puritans of today.

The Bright Young Things, at least, had no illusions about humanity and the world they lived in. Nor did they, all credit to them, seek to impose petit-bourgeois morals upon their elders or seek to upend the natural order of things in favour of the ugly, the evil, the sentimental and the incapable.

Americans think youth culture began after WW2. That's only true of mass youth culture. Whenever young people have the money and independence to do as they like, youth culture inevitably follows. Historically, it was confined to very small groups until the rise of the middle classes. The BYTs were, perhaps, the last of those exclusive coteries. After them came the Depression, then the Second World War and the massification, as Marshall McLuhan termed it, of culture.(less)

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