Exasperated query

Am I the only person developing severe allergies to fiction about Emotionally Dysfunctional Adults Failing to Make Their Way in a Shallow and Commercialized World?  Because it appears to me that this theme (which has been with us for quite some time, and is perhaps wearing out its welcome) tends to generate aggravatingly slick tales. 

Comments

[antirealist]

I think the Bootie character in Claire Messud's "The Emperor's Children" is the latest example of this sort of thing I've seen recently.

Care to tell us of whom you were thinking?

[ceresina]

Oo! Oo! Me too! The Corrections is the one that pushed me over the edge.

[Flora]

The Corrections was certainly blatant--who wasn't emotionally dysfunctional in it? At least the author redeemed one of his characters by the end, adhering to the currently fashionable narrative necessity of subdued epiphany. It would be nice to read a novel (written recently) with characters I'd actually like to meet. (I'm thinking, I'm thinking...)

[Jonathan]

Oblivion's just what you need. As a corrective. To the above. I mean. Kind of.

[bob]

Just how long *has* this theme been used in fiction? I know it was fairly prominent in the 1950s, but how far back does it go? In a way, it was true of the the Pickwick Papers.

[Rebecca]

A friend and I were talking the other day about the proliferation of books aimed at female audiences about women who find themselves unhappy in their careers/marriages/houses/friendships/etc who then quit their careers/marriages/houses/friendships, travel the world, and "find themselves."

Any and all of these make me vomit!

[Acre]

Add me to the list of those who is irritated by these novels. I can't shake the feeling that I'm somehow supposed to feel bad for the privileged but downtrodden who can't seem to get over something akin to not wearing the right shoes in junior high. (Ok, sometimes they suffer things that seem to be actually traumatic, but still, I'm hard pressed to feel they are oppressed by something other than their own choices or attachment to their own dysfunction.)

I find this trend second only to the Overcome Oppression By Being Hopeful and Cute (Preferably with a Hat or Adorable Prayer of Some Kind) Genre in terms of ability to make me surly.