"So the book is about summer camp, but it is in kind of the same way as Plato's cave is about prisoners and chains."
"There's probably no better prism to really look at our generation - who we are and how we got to be that way - other than through the summer camp prism," Bennett says. He entered a place where children first learned to swim, to take the lead in a musical and to dabble in the ways of love and aftershave. It truly was a teenage utopia where it seemed to me kids were making the rules for other kids." "I came over when I was 19 expecting to hang out with Huggy Bear in New York City, but being whisked off to Maine to a wonderful camp," Bennett says. A native of Liverpool, England, Bennett first experienced what he calls the "Petri dish" of American camp culture as a counselor in the 1980s. Roger Bennett documents this cultural landscape in a new collection of essays titled Camp Camp: Where Fantasy Island Meets Lord of the Flies. It's a place where Esprit rules as the Prada of adolescence, and where boys perfect pranks on their bunk mates. Yes, summer camp, where many experienced their first kiss beyond the lazy patrol of camp counselors, or their first time cross-dressing for the lip-syncing competition. It's that time of year, when children swarm to camps on lakes with appropriated Native American names and sweaty cabins filled with bunk beds and the spoils of independence. Roger Bennett, co-author of Camp Camp, at Camp Kingswood in Bridgton, Maine, in 1990.
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