‘…what Café du Dôme was to the Lost Generation, the dining hall at Bennington College was to the lost generation revisited, otherwise known as Generation X. … And while, of course, southwestern Vermont wasn’t Paris, somehow, in the early-to-mid eighties, it was just as sly, louche, low-down, and darkly perdu… Seated around the table, berets swapped for Wayfarers and ready to gorge on the conversation if not the food (cocaine, the Pernod of its era, is a notorious appetite suppressant), were Bret Easton Ellis, future writer of American Psycho and co-leader of the literary Brat Pack, Jonathan Lethem, future writer of Fortress of Solitude and MacArthur genius, and Donna Tartt, future writer of The Secret History and Pulitzer Prize winner. All three were in Bennington’s class of 1986. …  All three were, at various times, infatuated and disappointed with one another. Their friendships stimulated and fueled by rivalry, as much as affection. And all three would mythologize Bennington in their fiction…’

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