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Melt with Me: Coming of Age and Other ’80s Perils
At the intersection of 1980s pop culture, the Cold War, and the trials of coming of age sits Melt with Me. Paul Crenshaw takes up a range of topics from Star Wars to video games, Choose Your Own Adventure books to the Satanic Panic. Blending the personal with the historical, levity with gravity, Crenshaw shows how pop culture shaped those who grew up in 1980s how Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative drove fears of nuclear war, how professional wrestling taught us everyone was either a good guy or a bad guy, how Bugs Bunny cartoons reflected the absurdity of war and mutually assured destruction, and how video games taught young boys, in particular, that no matter how hard they tried to save it, the world would end itself. Reflecting on the decade and its dark influence on fear-based notions of nation and manhood, Crenshaw writes, “All this reminds me I’m still afraid of the same things I was afraid of as a child. Some days I think the movies are real and we’re watching the last hour of humanity. You’ll have to decide if there’s any hope.”
- GenresNonfiction
208 pages, Kindle Edition
Published October 14, 2023
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
December 13, 2023
Melt With Me review:
This collection of essays is a fun, if heavy, romp through 80’s culture tinged with fear of nuclear annihilation, as experienced through the lens of the author’s pre/early adolescence through young adulthood, as translated by the perspective of the adult. I laughed almost as much as I cried, and while I often caught myself thinking as I read “I was never afraid like that”, I realized later that I was probably the fish not knowing about the water I was breathing in all around me, and I can see some affects of living in fear as I reflect back on my own life through that time.
Being older than the author, and female, I was reaching adulthood as the 80’s really shifted into gear, so the 80’s were my college and launch years. I didn’t play video games, and I disdained professional wrestling, so I had no direct and immediate experience of acting out war scene and battles in my own life on that kind of scale. My father — a US Forest Service employee, like the author’s, albeit retired and running his own small business by then — was a WWII veteran who saw action in the Battle of Peleliu, and I had six older brothers who each somehow managed to avoid the draft for Vietnam and who didn’t voluntarily join up, in no small part, I’m sure now, due to lukewarm or outright lack of encouragement to do so by my dad, given his experience with war. Not to mention that as a member of the civil service in the 60’s & 70’s he was involved to some extent not really known to me, in preparing for the Soviet attack that in the author’s mind was so imminent. But that particular fear didn’t really trickle down to me, sheltered as I was.
There were economic anxieties, relationships challenges, yes, and those are the parts of the essays that ring true for me, against the backdrop of the music and movies explored in this essay collection. In the fall of the year I moved away from my hometown, a young girl the same age and of a similar appearance as one of my cherished nieces disappeared while walking home from school in the city that bordered my new hometown, and it struck a fear in me that colored my eventual parenting, manifesting in ways that I know my children felt constrained by. So I was grabbed by the very first essay in the book, “Choose Your Own Adventure for 80’s Kids”, which is a brilliant exploration of possibilities and near-misses, of the ramifications of careless and careful choices of children and the parents who send them out into the world, in the before-world, trusting that they’ll come home safe. In fact from that point on, I read the book with my millennial son in mind, intending to gift him with the book when I’m finished with it, saying “see, I’m not the only one afraid.”
While I vaguely recall whisperings of the “Satanic Panic”, and am certainly fascinated with it now, by the 80’s “religion” had largely lost its power to scare me, but the essay of that name, and one of my favorites in the collection, “The Other Place,” brought me right back to my days of Methodist Youth Fellowship (MYF), high-school sponsored Young Life, and visiting various friends’ church services, Sunday Schools, youth camps and other activities, and all the stuff that puts on young minds.
Other notable essays for me were: New Words for the New World, about finding the right words to fix everything, which I have to believe is a driving force for most writers;“Breakdown,” — about the intersection of kids and music and race, awareness of commonalities, recognition of “the generation gap” in these sensibilities (based on my own 60’s-70’s child sensibilities I truly thought we’d be in a much better place than we are today, and this perhaps gives some small glimpse as to why we are not-?); and the brilliantly-rendered Right Here, Right Now, which opened my eyes to how much of the music we listened to back then is about not only reflecting our reality, but engaged in protest, trying to wake us up, make us think, for the most part without our conscious recognition of what it’s about. Honestly, it’s the most ingenious way you can affect minds and hearts, and it was for me a fun exploration of beloved music of that era.
While it might be a little heavy on doom and gloom at times, Melt With Me is a beautiful blend (shall we say melting together?) of the threads of reality that comprised the 1980’s that is really satisfying to read. And, I go away from every reading session with a favorite from my college days, 1982 new wave band Bad English’s hit “Melt With You” (about what else, I now know ~ nuclear annihilation) playing in my mind for a couple of hours.
This collection of essays is a fun, if heavy, romp through 80’s culture tinged with fear of nuclear annihilation, as experienced through the lens of the author’s pre/early adolescence through young adulthood, as translated by the perspective of the adult. I laughed almost as much as I cried, and while I often caught myself thinking as I read “I was never afraid like that”, I realized later that I was probably the fish not knowing about the water I was breathing in all around me, and I can see some affects of living in fear as I reflect back on my own life through that time.
Being older than the author, and female, I was reaching adulthood as the 80’s really shifted into gear, so the 80’s were my college and launch years. I didn’t play video games, and I disdained professional wrestling, so I had no direct and immediate experience of acting out war scene and battles in my own life on that kind of scale. My father — a US Forest Service employee, like the author’s, albeit retired and running his own small business by then — was a WWII veteran who saw action in the Battle of Peleliu, and I had six older brothers who each somehow managed to avoid the draft for Vietnam and who didn’t voluntarily join up, in no small part, I’m sure now, due to lukewarm or outright lack of encouragement to do so by my dad, given his experience with war. Not to mention that as a member of the civil service in the 60’s & 70’s he was involved to some extent not really known to me, in preparing for the Soviet attack that in the author’s mind was so imminent. But that particular fear didn’t really trickle down to me, sheltered as I was.
There were economic anxieties, relationships challenges, yes, and those are the parts of the essays that ring true for me, against the backdrop of the music and movies explored in this essay collection. In the fall of the year I moved away from my hometown, a young girl the same age and of a similar appearance as one of my cherished nieces disappeared while walking home from school in the city that bordered my new hometown, and it struck a fear in me that colored my eventual parenting, manifesting in ways that I know my children felt constrained by. So I was grabbed by the very first essay in the book, “Choose Your Own Adventure for 80’s Kids”, which is a brilliant exploration of possibilities and near-misses, of the ramifications of careless and careful choices of children and the parents who send them out into the world, in the before-world, trusting that they’ll come home safe. In fact from that point on, I read the book with my millennial son in mind, intending to gift him with the book when I’m finished with it, saying “see, I’m not the only one afraid.”
While I vaguely recall whisperings of the “Satanic Panic”, and am certainly fascinated with it now, by the 80’s “religion” had largely lost its power to scare me, but the essay of that name, and one of my favorites in the collection, “The Other Place,” brought me right back to my days of Methodist Youth Fellowship (MYF), high-school sponsored Young Life, and visiting various friends’ church services, Sunday Schools, youth camps and other activities, and all the stuff that puts on young minds.
Other notable essays for me were: New Words for the New World, about finding the right words to fix everything, which I have to believe is a driving force for most writers;“Breakdown,” — about the intersection of kids and music and race, awareness of commonalities, recognition of “the generation gap” in these sensibilities (based on my own 60’s-70’s child sensibilities I truly thought we’d be in a much better place than we are today, and this perhaps gives some small glimpse as to why we are not-?); and the brilliantly-rendered Right Here, Right Now, which opened my eyes to how much of the music we listened to back then is about not only reflecting our reality, but engaged in protest, trying to wake us up, make us think, for the most part without our conscious recognition of what it’s about. Honestly, it’s the most ingenious way you can affect minds and hearts, and it was for me a fun exploration of beloved music of that era.
While it might be a little heavy on doom and gloom at times, Melt With Me is a beautiful blend (shall we say melting together?) of the threads of reality that comprised the 1980’s that is really satisfying to read. And, I go away from every reading session with a favorite from my college days, 1982 new wave band Bad English’s hit “Melt With You” (about what else, I now know ~ nuclear annihilation) playing in my mind for a couple of hours.
November 5, 2023
These essays are beautifully written and will easily remind and rekindle the thoughts and emotions of Gen-Xers. Paul Crenshaw is skilled at evoking emotion through prose, and he doesn’t disappoint in this collection. Melt with Me is a moving and insightful collection of 80’s history. I highly recommend this collection for Gen-Xers and really, anyone. This collection is a must read.
February 24, 2025
I love Paul Crenshaw's writing and his quirky way of looking at the world. This collection of stories tell about growing up in the 80's, which makes him the same age as my kids. Sadly, it was a time of fear and confusion, so some of the stories are deeply sad.
September 7, 2023
I highly recommend this wonderful book of essays that will be forthcoming in October.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews