E-Mail This Article to a Friend Dazed and confused The roll call of rebel youth sounds off from fiction shelves this summer BY RICCO VILLANUEVA SIASOCO

If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born," says über-misanthrope Holden Caulfield, "and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth."

From J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye to Henry Miller’s decidedly more adult but just as ennui-ridden Tropic of Cancer, the roll call of rebel youth and unhappy twentysomethings calls out from fiction shelves as tragically as longing itself.

Of course, the drive to understand lost youth isn’t just confined to literature: this kind of Salinger-esque apathy intrigues scientists as well. Psychologists like Jean Piaget have always claimed that brain development caps at around age 12, but recent studies say that the brain may not fully mature until age 20. In the May 10 issue of Time, a cover story touting SECRETS OF THE TEEN BRAIN describes MRIs that document how the teenage brain "morphs and grows."

So science may be able to prove why kids are so dramatic, but will we ever understand the emotional angst of these clothes-obsessed, prone-to-tantrum years? Do we even want to? In a spate of recent novels and story collections, some very astute writers ask us to do just that, offering an intimate look at angsty teens and young adults, and inviting us to embrace and empathize with their troubled lives.

Are you one of those readers who guiltily turn to comic books or detective novels? Love the coming-of-age form, but don’t want to be caught with your 16-year-old’s copy of The Catcher in the Rye? Check out these recent reads about confused young people seeking light.

Project X, by Jim Shepard (Knopf, 2004; $20). Shall we enter the dejected mind of Edwin Hanratty, the headache-prone narrator of Project X?

I start to say something, but I don’t even know what I was going to say. I’m such a loser and a half. I’m the kid you think about when you want to make yourself feel better. If I were me I’d talk about myself behind my back.

A post-millennial Holden Caulfield or just a whiny excuse for a character’s self-loathing and sloth? In Project X, Jim Shepard reveals the emotional core of a bottom-of-the-clique-heap eighth grader driven to Columbine-style school violence.

Shepard, a literary ventriloquist as masterful as Russell Banks in his skull-and-crossbones novel Rule of the Bone, walks us through the fall semester of self-avowed loser Edwin Hanratty. Think back to your own high-school days: how did you pass the time between classes or after school? Reading handwritten notes from first loves beside a row of metal lockers, or sprinting the winning lap of a varsity sport on an asphalt track? For Edwin, a great deal of time goes to troubleshooting his locker combination. He fumbles through days either seeking alternatives to locker storage or hiding under his bed from his worried family. After school, he and his equally alienated friend Flake get into fights with the soccer team in front of the school dumpster. Even awkward lunch hours with Tawanda, a female admirer, culminate in disaster; she shares their classmates’ mistaken belief that he’s gay. "I feel like resting my head in the spaghetti. I settle for turning over the plate."

Project X is penetrating for its psychological insight and empathy. Not only do we understand our narrator’s difficulties, we feel his struggle not to break down and cry. Unlike his hapless hero, Jim Shepard seems to get it all right.