The answer is: A novel by Canadian author Douglas Coupland If you responded "What is Generation X, Alex?" You're right. Some of the hottest topics on ASG-X, even after three years of debate, surround our identity as a generation. Hardly a month passes when you don't see somebody posting with a simple question: Am I in? And for every time somebody asks about being in, another somebody declares that he couldn't possibly be Generation X. For the most part, the accepted answer is that if you were born between 1961 and 1981, you are. As a matter of fact, you don't really have a choice. This is based largely on theories presented in Generations: The History of America's Future 1584 to 2069, by William Strauss and Neil Howe. They propose a theory of American history as a recurring cycle dependent on the interaction of four different types of generations (Idealist, Reactive, Civic, and Adaptive). The 13th Generation as Strauss and Howe call us, is a Reactive type, meaning that its members are generally discarded and viewed as nuisances or worse while they're young, but in middle age are called upon to provide steady leadership during a great historic crisis. Still, given that the youngest members of our generation are in high school at this point, it will remain for historians to determine how Generation X is remembered. But for the time being, some have chosen careers and started families. Nobody knows exactly what to call us, what to expect from us, or what we're going to do next. We don't even know, ourselves. Part of that is because there is no "we." Like any generation, Generation X comprises everybody born during a given time period. It simply isn't possible to opt in or out of your date of birth. That means that a Ph. D in molecular biology who started at Harvard when he was 16 is as much a member as a directionless 20-year-old barista with multiple body piercings; as the mother of two who stays home with the kids; as Miss America. We are not a monolith. We do not share a brain, or any one set of opinions. What binds Generation X is the cultural climate in which most of us grew up, and the realities that we face as we come to adulthood under less than ideal conditions. We blame perceived excesses of the previous generation—Baby Boomers who seem reluctant to admit that there is a generation of rising adults younger than they are, with different skill sets. We wonder what we ever did to earn the contempt of these people, other than be younger and differently focused. We don't know how we're going to fix the problems left on our hands, like a burnt-out planet, a declining economy, and the generation that includes our children: idealists coming of age full of expectations. We do know that these and other problems have to be solved, and that we can't count on anybody else to solve them. None of this is true for all of us, so take it all with a grain of salt. We do. All we are is people who grew up at the same time. That's a generation. 
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