49 Reasons Why 2016 Wasn't as Bad as You Think

Sebastian Junger’s ‘Tribe’

Image by Tim Hetherington

By Dan Friedman December 27, 2016

I was going to say how much I enjoyed the personal whimsy and occasional profundity of Joseph Skibell’s “My Father’s Guitar,” a collection of autobiographical and stylish stories. But then, the tribes spoke at the ballot box, in the United Kingdom and then in America. The outpouring of (often unacceptable) antipathy towards people outside of your own group needs to be understood in the context of the strong feelings of belonging and home that certain groups, certain tribes, engender. Sebastian Junger’s “Tribe” is a powerful yearning for and explication of the tribe from a war reporter, a cosmopolitan, a writer who probably feels that we should all universally love one another but really don’t. He puts his finger right on the sore spot of capitalist alienation and explains how much we want to belong yet how deeply sore we are.

Dan Friedman is the former executive editor and whisky correspondent of the Forward, and is the author of a book about Tears for Fears, the ’80s emo rock band.

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