Immortal New Gods
By: Joshua Glenn | Categories: Haw-Haw

A YEAR AGO this month, I identified a generational cohort of Americans and Western Europeans: the New Gods. Born between 1914 and 1923, the New Gods are — to translate my periodization into the middlebrow-speak of lazy journalists, pop sociologists, and Boomer historians — the Greatest Generation’s younger half-cohort.

The New Gods really were an impressive bunch, in their heyday: heroic, empowered, godlike. As artists and writers, but also as actors, politicians, musicians, filmmakers, journalists, and so forth, they operated in two registers — the everyday and the mythical — simultaneously. Hence their moniker, which I borrowed from comics artist-writer Jack Kirby (b. 1917).

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The youngest New Gods are turning 86 this year; the oldest New Gods are turning 95. The recent deaths of New God hilo heroes Bea Arthur, Philip José Farmer, and Ricardo Montalban, not to mention last year’s loss of Alain Robbe-Grillet, Charlton Heston, Bettie Page, Cyd Charisse, Edmund Hillary, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Eddy Arnold, Edward Lorenz, Arthur C. Clarke, Forrest J. Ackerman, and Richard Widmark, are sobering reminders that this important generation is nearly extinct.

And yet… among the New Gods lurk a handful of men and women who have never been young. And who will, therefore, in all likelihood never die. HiLobrow.com is onto them! Here they are, a handful of New Gods who are actually — like gods — immortal.

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Ernest Borgnine (born 1917)

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Carol Channing (born 1921)

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Abe Vigoda (born 1921)

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Nancy Reagan (born 1921)

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Christopher Lee (born 1922)

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Henry Kissinger (born 1923)

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POSTSCRIPT

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READ MORE essays by Joshua Glenn, originally published in: THE BAFFLER | BOSTON GLOBE IDEAS | BRAINIAC | CABINET | FEED | HERMENAUT | HILOBROW | HILOBROW: GENERATIONS | HILOBROW: RADIUM AGE SCIENCE FICTION | HILOBROW: SHOCKING BLOCKING | THE IDLER | IO9 | N+1 | NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW | SEMIONAUT | SLATE

Joshua Glenn’s most recent book is The Wage Slave’s Glossary, co-authored with Mark Kingwell and illustrated by Seth.

Including Maila Nurmi (born 1922), the cult actress better known as Vampira, on this list would have been the crowning touch. Alas, she died last year. RIP.

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Joshua Glenn is a Boston-based writer, publisher, and cultural semiologist-for-hire. He does business as KING MIXER, LLC. He is coauthor and/or co-editor of TAKING THINGS SERIOUSLY, THE IDLER'S GLOSSARY, THE WAGE SLAVE'S GLOSSARY, the object-oriented story collection SIGNIFICANT OBJECTS, and the kids' field guide to life UNBORED. He is co-founder of the websites HILOBROW and SEMIONAUT; and co-founder of the science fiction imprint HILOBOOKS. He produced and co-designed the iPhone app KER-PUNCH. He manages a secretive online community known as THE HERMENAUTIC CIRCLE. In the '00s, Glenn was an editor, columnist, blogger (BRAINIAC), and new media producer at the BOSTON GLOBE. In the '90s, among other things, he published the philosophy/pop culture zine HERMENAUT; co-produced the DIY website and early online social network TRIPOD; and was an editor at UTNE READER.

4 Comments to “Immortal New Gods”

  1. Matthew Battles says:

    omg, Carol’s moving in for the kill!

  2. Rick says:

    and there goes Ed McMahon…

    You are correct, sir!

  3. [...] and smarter than the rest of us; they possess superior technology; and they may even exist in a dimension outside of normal time and space. Let’s call them: the New [...]

  4. Joshua Glenn says:

    R.I.P. J. D. Salinger (1919–2010) & Howard Zinn (1922–2010)

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