( CNN ) -- It seems today that a new stage of life has opened up . Sociologists call it `` emergent adulthood , '' Time magazine termed it `` the Twixter years , '' and author Kay Hymowitz referred to it as `` pre-adulthood . '' People in this group are over 18 , but as they head toward 30 they still act and think like adolescents . They bounce from job to job and relationship to relationship , live with parents at home or in a house with five friends , watch ESPN and play video games ( the boy-men ) and read `` Twilight '' and ponder whether he 's just not into you ( the girl-women ) , while all of them sprinkle `` like '' and `` ' n stuff '' and `` ya know '' in their speech . Adolescence used to be a condition you escaped as soon as you could , but these 20-somethings want to prolong it . We need to counteract them , to restore embarrassment to adolescent habits , and books are a key weapon . After all , books have the power to fortify attitudes . For instance , the `` Harry Potter '' books , a wonderful phenomenon for tweens and early-teens , offered so compelling a world of heroic , beset youth and hostile adults that readers clung to Harry well past the proper age . In fact , quidditch matches have spread to more than 200 college campuses . `` Twilight '' has had a similar impact , intensifying the ordinary shenanigans of teenagers to luridly high melodrama . Why grow up when adolescence contains so much romance and suspense ? Clinging to such young adult fantasies , pre-adults think that grownup content is a sensation , like `` Fifty Shades of Grey , '' a book so poorly written as to be beyond parody . Only a 14-year-old sensibility could read this passage when Miss Steele first encounters Christian without laughing at the witlessness of the words . I open the door and stumble through , tripping over my own feet and falling headfirst into the office . Double crap -- me and my two left feet ! I am on my hands and knees in the doorway to Mr. Grey 's office , and gentle hands are around me , helping me to stand . I am so embarrassed , damn my clumsiness . I have to steel myself to glance up . Holy cow -- he 's so young . Now , who trips over her own feet and falls headfirst to the floor ? And the callowness of `` Double crap '' and `` Holy cow '' could n't be more phony . Young women loved it , though . And so did many older women , apparently . This is bad for our 20-year-olds and bad for our culture . Let us hope , then , that 2013 will unveil a new book about the young , but one that halts the creep of adolescence into adulthood . Yes , there are several superb recent novels about teens and 20-somethings by talented writers , like Jeffrey Eugenides ' `` The Marriage Plot '' and Gary Shteyngart 's `` Super Sad True Love Story . '' But they have too much sympathy for the emerging adult , too much understanding of young love and companionship , to do the work of correction . It will take an altogether different book to explode extended adolescence ; specifically , a frolicking comic novel that submits the interests and longings of pre-adults to whimsy , burlesque and farce . Not gentle humor , but all-out comedy or satire that casts the whole experience and habitat of pre-adults as both ludicrous and avoidable . Not trite pratfalls that , supposedly , make the characters lovable inept and self-involved , but outrageous ( and hilarious ) situations such as those in Kingsley Amis ' `` Lucky Jim '' and Philip Roth 's `` Portnoy 's Complaint . '' Not sensitive and self-aware individuals coping with circumstances that afflict their whole age group , but memorable eccentrics like Ignatius J. Reilly from `` A Confederacy of Dunces , '' whose disdain for all things contemporary highlights the virtues and vices of modern life . This comic novel will amuse and sell well , for the better elements of our culture and our youth have grown impatient with the travails and aggrandizing of Twixter books , movies , music and TV . It will serve a larger purpose , too , the same one that motivated satirists from Aristophanes and Juvenal to Swift and Pope to Mark Twain and the creators of `` Dr. Strangelove '' : to curb self-indulgence , deflate pretense , and expel stupidity . To take down a popular genre or a representative figure or a trendy pose , one good belly laugh works better than pages of strict criticism . H.L . Mencken chided middle-American backwardness at length , but his best weapon was a one-word comic label : the `` booboisie . '' After Sarah Palin 's nomination to the 2008 Republican ticket , intellectuals on the left attacked and on the right fretted , but the surest demolition came at the hands of Tina Fey 's impersonation . When the catastrophe movies of the 1970s became too theatrical and clichÃ©d , the film `` Airplane ! '' appeared and one could no longer watch the genre with a straight face . Let 's have a comic novel do the same for emergent adulthood . The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Mark Bauerlein .
Mark Bauerlein : Today 's 20-somethings want to stretch out their adolescence . Bauerlein : We need a comic novel that exposes the habits of `` pre-adults '' as ludicrous . He says books have the power to fortify attitudes . Bauerlein : Only all-out comedy or satire can show that pre-adults ' behavior is backward .