Anti-Nostalgia in the Millennial South

Like thousands of Californians over the last decade, Molly Silver moved to the Greater Metro Nashville Area between the last gasps of COVID and the first rumblings of the Palisades Fire. But, in contrast to those other American refugees from SoCal who keep locals in a perpetual tizzy, she’s born and bred in the Volunteer State and very much enjoying her homecoming.

Silver spent nearly two decades in L.A.’s entertainment industry in everything from independent film to commercials as she worked her way up to union memberships. When the 2023 strikes forced her to take a break from writing, she tried something new: she began a novel.

In May, Silver’s debut  OMG! Did I Just Time Travel?! hit bookstores. Focusing on deadly serious teenage athlete, Lydia James and her sudden descent into 1989 thanks to a portal in the woods by her Knoxville high school, the novel melds sci-fi and Y.A, without the melodramatic excess or revelry in nostalgia that have marked both genres over the past few years. More impressively, Silver manages to create a real-deal portrait of the contemporary South negotiating its own identity that remains free from the down-home tropes that continue to define the region. 

As she prepares to embark on the fall book singing circuit, Silver spoke with The Pamphleteer about preserving Nashville’s creative community, interrogating millennial nostalgia, and capturing a version of the South that locals can appreciate. 

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

The Pamphleteer: This is a very Southern book. What I find refreshing about it is that it doesn’t go the way of Faulkner or Flannery O’Connor or jump into the Southern Gothic’s excesses and stereotypes. It could only take place in Knoxville with its milieu of the Oak Ridge Oppenheimer lab and football town. It’s a very distinct South, and you really get the geography of our region. What was your approach to the world-building? 

Silver: Not to start off on a macabre, sad note, but I lost my mother in 2020. Two weeks before the global shutdown, she unfortunately passed away. And then during my time of grief, I really was just becoming so nostalgic for when she was at her happiest and remembering her in a certain way. I just kept being pulled back to these certain time periods in Tennessee during the 80s and the 90s. I wanted to keep that nostalgia alive, and I thought, “How do I do that? Do I make this a TV show?” But we were in the middle of the strike and I got some advice: that I’d have to go the long way around if I wanted this to ever become a TV show and needed to work on a book first. 

I thought that was incredibly daunting. But I really love that I could go back in time and just think about Knoxville and how to bring that to life because there was something really special about Knoxville in the 80s and 90s. I can’t explain it! There was just a lot of magic in that little town because it was a lot littler then. I found myself longing for those times. 

The Pamphleteer: When I found out about the book, I expected it to tap into our current “I love the 80s, 90s, Bush 2000s vibe” that’s been all over social media this year. But it was refreshing and unexpected that you focused on Gen X and Gen Z while sidelining the millennials. It’s a very melancholic type of nostalgia that brings up a lot of caveats. Why do you think people are especially drawn to those decades now, and why do you think that our particular generation is so obsessed with the past? 

Silver: I didn’t want to have to explain COVID. There’s no way anyone came through that unscathed.That’s why I was very specific on the dates that we started. I was like, “2019? Perfect. Before everything got weird.” And then I did the math. When I was outlining, it just all kind of clicked into place. 

The reason why we are so nostalgic is because even though we are connected more than ever through all of our technological devices and social media, we are lonelier than we have ever been before. We don’t remember true human connection. 

We have everything. We’re like Pavlov’s dog, unfortunately, with our technology. Anytime we hear a ding, a buzz, a whistle, we’re picking up our phones, and we’re so pulled out of being in the moment. In the 80s and 90s, what was great is we still had technology, but it was moving at a sloth's pace. So, we were just so hyper present. Our media content was long-form. We’re not having these trends that are truncating our ability and our attention spans. Time moved slower. Everyone had demands on them, but it’s not the way that it is today, where everything can be so streamlined, and we have all these expectations.

I don’t want to speak for everyone, but I think everyone is struggling on some level while asking, “Why do I feel so lonely?” or “Why do I feel so disconnected when we are so connected and through so many ways?” 

The point of the book wasn’t, “Put your phones away,” and, "Technology is terrible”. It’s a way to look to the past and see what maybe we got a little right there if it’s more applicable in our everyday life. I think that’s why we were truly more nostalgic than ever, because we want it, but we don’t know how to get back there. 

The Pamphleteer: One of the best moves that you make in the book is that Lydia can mine every subculture imaginable with her phone, but it’s Kelly Stein who really knows who she is despite having much less access to culture that exists beyond the mall and smaller stores in 80s Knoxville. How did you use the time period to craft the characters’ identities?

Silver: Lydia does feel lost. You can hear it on the first page when she is griping about school, and “Where do I fit?” You couldn’t pay me enough money to be a teenage girl today. I know the struggles I had as a teenage girl with music videos and magazines and not feeling like enough. I couldn’t even imagine that feeling with social media and all the things that are crammed down their throats. It’s hard to know who you really are when you’re trying to be all these other things. The 80s were a different time. 

The Pamphleteer: The book has a very unique structure. In the first third, what we see happens in real time. Then, you shift to the letters Kelly writes Lydia. It’s a time capsule before everything comes crashing down in that third part. What led you to organizing the book in this way?

Silver: We’re seeing it all through Lydia’s eyes. But I love the history chunk of it, because it’s that moment that you get to fall in love with Kelly. It’s like a big sister writing her younger sister, and telling her about all these beautiful moments in life and trying to give her wisdom.

There’s just something really sweet because you start to see Kelly’s voice. You see her writing getting better. You see her music tastes change. You see her grow up. My goal was for it to feel like you’re sharing that moment with Lydia. You’re like, “Oh yeah. I get exactly what she’s feeling in this moment, because I’m feeling it too.”

The Pamphleteer: When the story gets back to the 80s, junk food is ingrained in the daily lives of all these characters. Looking back, I’m almost embarrassed by how accurate of a diet assessment that was for our generation. Commentary or historical accuracy? 

Silver:It was a pendulum shift for me because I got so into what I was eating and the bad things out there, that I lost that joy of being able to just enjoy myself. I was just always thinking “Oh, this isn’t good,” or “This is ultra processed,” and just sucking the life out of the moment. As kids, we had no idea. I think if our parents knew back then, it would have been a little different.

At the same time, even the ultra-processed food was not nearly as bad when we were kids. It’s gotten worse over time. The whole takeaway of the book is balance. Not just your food, but your technology. All of it. I wanted to find a fun way to not force a message down people’s throats, but the sensory aspects of food really help paint a more nostalgic picture of what it was like to be in that time period. 

The Pamphleteer: How has moving from Los Angeles back to Tennessee influenced your storytelling? You’re not coming at this world from an outsider’s perspective. How did your time in LA impact you and how did writing the project in Nashville affect the final draft?

Silver: The beautiful thing about Tennessee that I realized after coming back here is how life moves. My nervous system got really used to Los Angeles when it’s probably not built for that. I get real quiet here. A lot of stillness and safeness still exists in Nashville. That gave me the ability to really focus on this story. 

But once the story was done, I had to go to work. Through my day job, so much happened for me. It was such a reminder of the care that people have for their community. All the magic that I’ve ever hoped, wished, and dreamed would happen in L.A. for me, happened in Nashville. It’s because of the community. 

People around me kept asking questions about my creative career, and where it was going, and checking in with me. They invited me to an event where I met another author who then introduced me to my publishers who signed me six weeks after our meeting and got a contract in place. It’s crazy how that all happened, because of the community in Nashville, and the sweet restaurant where I work called the Rose Pony. That aspect of community is not lost on me. 

The Pamphleteer: Preserving community has been paramount for a lot of people, especially exiles from California. Do you think Nashville is turning into Los Angeles?

Silver: Yeah, no. Nashville is such a sweet place. A lot of former Angelinos are really impressed because of the community. People want to know you. People want to care about you. I think people care about their neighbors. It's not that it didn’t happen in Los Angeles. Everything is going so fast, it’s different. There’s still so much Southern charm—the manners, the care—that makes this part of the South so great. 

I was away from it for so long that I forgot that. Artists support other artists. They know how hard it is, and that you have to work a lot of odd jobs while you go after your craft. They celebrate the small wins together. 

In Knoxville, you have the charm. In L.A. you have work environments with some of the funniest, most talented people in the world that keep you motivated. Nashville is the amalgamation of those two things. You’ve got the manners, and then you’ve got the artistry. And to me, that is what makes this place so special. 

OMG! Did I Just Time Travel?! is available wherever books are sold.