Dery has critiqued various aspects of the emerging ``cyberculture'' for magazines such as Rolling Stone, Wired, and Omni, and here he deepens and expands his ideas into a provocative analysis of the philosophical underpinnings of the wired revolution. Dery structures the book as a series of profiles of various ``computer-age subcultures'': junkyard roboticists, ``technopagans,'' cyberpunk musicians, body artists, and others who partake in one way or another of the technological apparatus of the digital era. Along the way he brings to bear an impressive (and sometimes almost too broad) range of sources; in one early paragraph he segues from computer theorist Hans Moravec to science fiction writer Vernor Vinge to Superman, from the Christian evolutionist Teilhard de Chardin to Timothy Leary to Star Trek: The Next Generation. Though at times Dery's sweeping scope leaves some subtopics (such as virtual sex) underexplored, on the whole he presents a convincing overview of a coherent pancultural phenomenon. And he doesn't stop at describing the current face of cyberculture, he dissects it, focusing primarily on what he calls ``the rhetoric of escape velocity''—a tendency among many cyber- enthusiasts to frame their notions in millennial terms, full of body loathing and the dream of digital transcendence. This rhetoric, says Dery, ``seduces us with its promise of a deliverance from human history and mortality,'' encouraging its believers to ignore ``the palpable facts of economic inequity and environmental depredation'' in the real world. He looks with favor on grassroots efforts to ``retrofit'' digital technology to other purposes, using it to elucidate those real-world troubles rather than to escape them. Supported by the words of the cyber-cultists themselves, Dery's critique—neither knee-jerk Luddite nor cyber-starry-eyed- -constitutes a vital examination of the values behind much of the ``cyberbole'' that increasingly clogs the cultural airwaves.
Pub Date: Feb. 15, 1996
ISBN: 0-8021-1580-2
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Analyzing his craft, a careful craftsman urges with Thoreauvian conviction that writers should simplify, simplify, simplify.
A New York Times columnist and editorial board member delivers a slim book for aspiring writers, offering saws and sense, wisdom and waggery, biases and biting sarcasm.
Klinkenborg (Timothy; or, Notes of an Abject Reptile, 2006), who’s taught for decades, endeavors to keep things simple in his prose, and he urges other writers to do the same. (Note: He despises abuses of the word as, as he continually reminds readers.) In the early sections, the author ignores traditional paragraphing so that the text resembles a long free-verse poem. He urges readers to use short, clear sentences and to make sure each one is healthy before moving on; notes that it’s acceptable to start sentences with and and but; sees benefits in diagramming sentences; stresses that all writing is revision; periodically blasts the formulaic writing that many (most?) students learn in school; argues that knowing where you’re headed before you begin might be good for a vacation, but not for a piece of writing; and believes that writers must trust readers more, and trust themselves. Most of Klinkenborg’s advice is neither radical nor especially profound (“Turn to the poets. / Learn from them”), and the text suffers from a corrosive fallacy: that if his strategies work for him they will work for all. The final fifth of the text includes some passages from writers he admires (McPhee, Oates, Cheever) and some of his students’ awkward sentences, which he treats analytically but sometimes with a surprising sarcasm that veers near meanness. He includes examples of students’ dangling modifiers, malapropisms, errors of pronoun agreement, wordiness and other mistakes.
Analyzing his craft, a careful craftsman urges with Thoreauvian conviction that writers should simplify, simplify, simplify.Pub Date: Aug. 7, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-307-26634-7
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 13, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Highly recommended—anyone at all interested in music will learn a lot from this book.
From the former Talking Heads frontman, a supremely intelligent, superbly written dissection of music as an art form and way of life.
Drawing on a lifetime of music-making as an amateur, professional, performer, producer, band member and solo artist, Byrne (Bicycle Diaries, 2009) tackles the question implicit in his title from multiple angles: How does music work on the ear, brain and body? How do words relate to music in a song? How does live performance relate to recorded performance? What effect has technology had on music, and music on technology? Fans of the Talking Heads should find plenty to love about this book. Steering clear of the conflicts leading to the band’s breakup, Byrne walks through the history, album by album, to illustrate how his views about performance and recording changed with the onset of fame and (small) fortune. He devotes a chapter to the circumstances that made the gritty CBGB nightclub an ideal scene for adventurous artists like Patti Smith, the Ramones, Blondie and Tom Verlaine and Television. Always an intensely thoughtful experimenter, here he lets us in on the thinking behind the experiments. But this book is not just, or even primarily, a rock memoir. It’s also an exploration of the radical transformation—or surprising durability—of music from the beginning of the age of mechanical reproduction through the era of iTunes and MP3s. Byrne touches on all kinds of music from all ages and every part of the world.
Highly recommended—anyone at all interested in music will learn a lot from this book.Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-936365-53-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: McSweeney’s
Review Posted Online: July 31, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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