In honor of tonight's season premiere of The Real World: San Diego (what, have they completely run out of interesting cities? What's next, Real World: Branson?), we asked author Albert Goldman what he thought of the show as it enters its 14th season.

Unfortunately, Goldman has been dead since 1994, so we settled on this passage from his long out-of-print book Disco:

That everybody sees himself as a star today is both a clichŽ and a profound truth. Thousands of young men and women have the looks, the clothes, the hairstyling, the drugs, the personal magnetism, the self‑confidence, and the history of conquest that proclaims the star. The one thing they lack—talent—is precisely what is most lacking in those other, nearly identical, young people whom the world has acclaimed as stars. Never in the history of show biz has the gap between the amateur and the professional been so small. Nor ever in the history of the world has there been such a rage for exhibitionism.

Meet the new Real World cast, two of whom (Jacques and Cameran) were 7 years-old when the original show premiered in 1992.