- 304 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub
About this book
A wide-ranging collection of essays on millennial American culture that "marshals a vast pop vocabulary with easy wit" (
The New York Times Book Review).
From the far left to the far right, on talk radio and the op-ed page, more and more Americans believe that the social fabric is unraveling. Celebrity worship and media frenzy, suicidal cultists and heavily armed secessionists: modern life seems to have become a "pyrotechnic insanitarium," Mark Dery says, borrowing a turn-of-the-century name for Coney Island. Dery elucidates the meaning to our madness, deconstructing American culture from mainstream forces like Disney and Nike to fringe phenomena like the Unabomber and alien invaders. Our millennial angst, he argues, is a product of a pervasive cultural anxiety—a combination of the social and economic upheaval wrought by global capitalism and the paranoia fanned by media sensationalism. The Pyrotechnic Insanitarium is a theme-park ride through the extremes of American culture of which The Atlantic has written, "Mark Dery confirms once again what writers and thinkers as disparate as Nathanael West, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Sigmund Freud, and Oliver Sacks have already shown us: the best place to explore the human condition is at its outer margins, its pathological extremes."
"Dery is the kind of critic who just might give conspiracy theory a good name." — Wired
From the far left to the far right, on talk radio and the op-ed page, more and more Americans believe that the social fabric is unraveling. Celebrity worship and media frenzy, suicidal cultists and heavily armed secessionists: modern life seems to have become a "pyrotechnic insanitarium," Mark Dery says, borrowing a turn-of-the-century name for Coney Island. Dery elucidates the meaning to our madness, deconstructing American culture from mainstream forces like Disney and Nike to fringe phenomena like the Unabomber and alien invaders. Our millennial angst, he argues, is a product of a pervasive cultural anxiety—a combination of the social and economic upheaval wrought by global capitalism and the paranoia fanned by media sensationalism. The Pyrotechnic Insanitarium is a theme-park ride through the extremes of American culture of which The Atlantic has written, "Mark Dery confirms once again what writers and thinkers as disparate as Nathanael West, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Sigmund Freud, and Oliver Sacks have already shown us: the best place to explore the human condition is at its outer margins, its pathological extremes."
"Dery is the kind of critic who just might give conspiracy theory a good name." — Wired
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Please note we cannot support devices running on iOS 13 and Android 7 or earlier. Learn more about using the app.
Yes, you can access The Pyrotechnic Insanitarium by Mark Dery in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Social Sciences & Literary Essays. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.
Information
Table of contents
- Cover
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: The Pyrotechnic Insanitarium
- A User's Guide to The Pyrotechnic Insanitarium
- 1. Have an Angst Day: The Scream Meme
- Section I. Dark Carnival
- Section II. Dead Meat
- Section III. Main Street, U.S.A.: The Public Sphere
- Section IV. The Parent TRAP
- Section V. Riding Shotgun with the Doom Patrol
- Conclusion: Last Things
- Notes