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| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  | | Home » Lost in the Meritocracy: The Undereducation of an Overachiever | | | | | | | Description: | | Percentile is destiny in America.”
So says Walter Kirn, a peerless observer and interpreter of American life, in this whip-smart memoir of his own long strange trip through American education. Working his way up the ladder of standardized tests, extracurricular activities, and class rankings, Kirn launched himself eastward from his rural Minnesota hometown to the ivy-covered campus of Princeton University. There he found himself not in a temple of higher learning so much as an arena for gamesmanship, snobbery, social climbing, ass-kissing, and recreational drug use, where the point of literature classes was to mirror the instructor's critical theories and actual reading of the books under consideration was optional. Just on the other side of the “bell curve's leading edge” loomed a complete psychic collapse.
LOST IN THE MERITOCRACY reckons up the costs of a system where the point is simply to keep accumulating points and never to look back—or within. It's a remarkable book that suggests the first step toward intellectual fulfillment is getting off the treadmill that is the American meritocracy. Every American who has spent years of his or her life there will experience many shocks of recognition while reading Walter Kirn’s sharp, rueful, and often funny book—and likely a sense of liberation at its end. | | | Features: | |
• ISBN13: 9780385521284
• Condition: New
• Notes: BUY WITH CONFIDENCE, Over one million books sold! 98% Positive feedback. Compare our books, prices and service to the competition. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed
| | | Product Details: | | | Author:
| Walter Kirn | | Hardcover:
| 224 pages | | Publisher:
| Doubleday | | Publication Date:
| May 19, 2009 | | Language:
| English | | ISBN:
| 0385521286 | | Package Length:
| 8.4 inches | | Package Width:
| 5.5 inches | | Package Height:
| 1.0 inches | | Package Weight:
| 0.7 pounds | | Average Customer Rating:
|  based on 35 reviews |
| | | | Customer Reviews: | |
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1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
 Save your timeJul 26, 2010
I am happy that I borrowed this book from the library, and that I did NOT spend money on it. In this work the author gets molested, has multiple sexual encounters, and uses drugs. But what is the point? The author seems to think that the educational system of meritocracy--wherein you earn your keep--is flawed, but he offers no alternative. Why should a secular education correct his personal moral failings? This causes an existential crisis for him, and then....? The book ends. He makes a good point in the beginning about the arbitrariness of standardized tests, but I can't help but point out that they sent the smart kid (him) to the Ivy League, and the screwballs drinking on a bus (his football teammates) to blue collar futures. Walter Kirn is one of those "radical error" authors: everyone else is mistaken except me! But a radical error author who offers nothing novel is a complete waste of time.
 Read the first third, toss the rest out.Jun 09, 2010
After reading Walter Kirn's book I wasn't sure which of us liked him less.
The first third of Lost in the Meritocracy has some momentum. Young Walter is a personable enough lad who has learned to work the system and reap the dubious rewards offered to him. He speaks movingly about a relationship with an elderly neighbor, he paints an evocative portrait of his hometown's flaws and failures, he sets the stage for his culture clash at college. There, at Princeton, the 'real' Walter Kirn emerges and it is a struggle to remain in his company. Filled with contempt and anger for himself, resentment and passive aggression for his classmates, Kirn spends the next two thirds of the book explaining how he embraced his own destruction. If I didn't know Princeton alumni (disclosure, I am not one, nor did I ever apply) I'd think the school turned out nothing but empty shells.
It is not until the final pages of the book that the author reveals the other side of Princeton. There were students working on their education, students more interested in reading Truman Capote than snorting drugs in the apartment below his. He doesn't seem to like these people much. He doesn't seem to like anyone much, even the elderly neighbor he opened the book with. In order to embrace an antihero, the reader must feel some affinity for the character. I felt no affinity for college aged Walter. When he has his alleged breakdown, when he decides that he was not wrong to embrace a life of mirroring expectations from others, I just don't care anymore. I don't want him to succeed. I resent the time we've spent together, it feels wasted. His uplifting ending depresses.
1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
How NOT to behave at school.Apr 27, 2010
This book about the authors experiences in High School and at Princeton was at its best when he was not talking about education, but rather when describing the odd assortment of people and outright losers he chose to surround himself with. I couldn't help but think that the author, rather than being lost in the meritocracy, might have had a more positive experience had he acted more intelligently and positively. Behavior has consequences.
1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
Something of a mess (the book and its lead character)Mar 03, 2010
Most of this book is about the author's life at Princeton University. More specifically, his misadventures (drugs and other deviant activities). From this reading you would hardly know that he attended classes. The author had his reasons for presenting this stilted view of undergrad life, but one consequence is that his book sems disjointed. Apparently he thinks that he was mis-cast as a Princeton student, and wants us to see his experiences there as saying something meaningful about the institution, or about culture at an elite academic institution, or ... Whatever! Not the innocent kid from Minnesota that he suggests, by his own admission he started gaming the educational system way back, grade school and onward. Perhaps the shock was that at Princeton it was a much harder game (and not just intellectual/academic), with lots of other skilled (and more socially and economically privileged) players.
5 of 5 found the following review helpful:
 ivy league disappointsFeb 28, 2010
A few years ago, I was asked to speak at an Ivy League school about some work that I had done with a nonprofit. The work I had done was hard, unrewarded, and I thought unnoticed. I was flattered to be asked to speak to the "best and brightest". I went to the event and because of my youthful looks was somehow routed into the area where student volunteers were working. I sat at the side for about an hour and observed the student volunteers fighting over who would get to meet with the famous people, refuse to assist with the less important speakers, absolutely refuse to put out the chairs and set up tables for the event as it was beneath them, and patronize the only minority students in the room. This was not a small assembly of students, but up to 50 that I observed behaving like this. Needless to say, Kirn's book reads very true to me. The students I observed were shallow, self absorbed, and selfish. My own children are now in college and I have discouraged them from seeking out an Ivy league school. I believe that schools like Princeton debase young people's character rather than bring out what is best in them. When I see all the havoc that these kinds of people have brought to our world, I am just sad. Surely, we can do better than this.
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