The most surprising thing about Jon Savage's new book may be the impetus behind it. At this stage of history, we're used to "teenage" meaning someone in a specific period of life, and connected to a specific mythology; it's sobering to realize that those defining characteristics had to be identified, then acknowledged—or maybe, as Savage puts it, created. In Teenage: The Creation Of Youth Culture, the author of the definitive punk-rock chronicle England's Dreaming ends with the post-World War II leisure market the term denoted, rather than beginning with it. In a sense, the book is a pre-history, but it's a resonant one. Savage explores the formulations of a kaleidoscopic array of teenager types, from the wild, sensational precursors to juvenile delinquency to the strait-laced good-citizen proto-preppie.
He's equally interested in the roles popular media, the social sciences, literature, and environment played in shaping the teenage mold. He begins with the posthumously published journals of Marie Bashkirtseff, whose excerpted notes are deft and packed with instantly recognizable feeling: "This time is only a passage that will lead me to where I'll be all right. Am I mad? Or fated? Be it one way or another, I'm bored!" He gleans the wonderlands of L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard Of Oz and J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan as rebukes to adulthood and case-makers for the extended adolescence that marked the 20th century. He explores the ways youth was mobilized into rank-and-file, from the relatively innocent "muscular Christian" ideals behind the Boy Scouts to the curdled vision of the Hitler Youth. And with a deft eye, he tracks the ways in which the laws of America and Europe adjusted to teenage crime.
Jazz's popular impact on the young threads through much of the book's latter half. Savage relates the story of London teenager Brenda Dean Paul, who caught a traveling show that originated in Harlem, befriended its stars, and vowed to become a "colored dancer." ("I felt so utterly at home with these enchanting people that every other white person in the room seemed positively genteel and almost indecently refined.") He further tracks the American swing craze of the '30s, and the wartime Swing Kids of Germany and Zazous of France. Savage's background as one of the greatest music writers is especially helpful here. But Teenage isn't simply a music book. It's Savage's claim to being a great historian, and it's mighty convincing.