Introducing 'Valley of the Dolls to millennials? Good luck with that!

The book turns 50 this year.

Photo credit:  Twitter

 'Valley of the Dolls' Pitched to a New Generation.  (The New York Times, 3/12/2016)

But if you ask people younger than 30 who Susann is, “you’d probably get a blank look,” said Brooke Hauser, who has written a book to be published in April called “Enter Helen,” about Helen Gurley Brown, Susann’s contemporary and the longtime editor of Cosmopolitan.

To test Brooke's hypothesis, I asked my two millenial-age sons.  Separately.   In both cases, the name 'Jacqueline Susann' elicited blank looks.  Both, however, were familiar with 'Valley of the Dolls' as the title of a movie, but neither of them had a clue what it was about.

"Is it a horror movie?" my younger son asked, taking a stab in the dark.

The question elicited a burst of laughter from me.

"It sounds like a horror movie," he insisted.

"More like horrible," I corrected.