Nation of Rebels Revisited
I'm still reading Nation of Rebels. I’m very tempted to end the book prematurely and rescind my earlier recommendation. It’s got a great premise: the marketing of counterculture, but this isn’t the book to write about that issue.
This is one of the most generalized, loosely connected pieces of nonfiction I’ve ever read. Enormous topics such as feminism and Freudian thought are glossed over to serve the theme of the book in a way that is infuriating. It’s the book equivalent of someone at a bad party with too many ideas, and you’ve somehow gotten yourself trapped in the kitchen with them. Where were the editors when this was being developed?
This is exactly the kind of book my father would have gotten ahold of and used as his cultural Bible for years. Big topics and big ideas condensed down to a stance that’s presented in small, opinionated paragraphs. And just enough meat on the bones to convince you that the authors have come across their sources in more than a passing way, but use them as broadly as possible to achieve a certain mindset in the reader.
And the thing is, I do resonate with the basic point of the book – of the supposed counterculture in society being nothing more than a stance that is easily marketable back to the same people who purport to belong to it. However, this book is so poorly written as to make that point diffuse enough to me to forget what we’re even talking about while reading it. The word "counterculture" in Nation of Rebels start appearing more and more like some vague boogeyman that invokes disdain and ridicule in the author’s prose, rather than being a more incisive look at how it exists in society.
Of course, if any of you bother with reading it, I’d appreciate your views. Chances are I’ll slog through it, just for the sake of completion, and it’d be great to have a dialogue about it.
This is one of the most generalized, loosely connected pieces of nonfiction I’ve ever read. Enormous topics such as feminism and Freudian thought are glossed over to serve the theme of the book in a way that is infuriating. It’s the book equivalent of someone at a bad party with too many ideas, and you’ve somehow gotten yourself trapped in the kitchen with them. Where were the editors when this was being developed?
This is exactly the kind of book my father would have gotten ahold of and used as his cultural Bible for years. Big topics and big ideas condensed down to a stance that’s presented in small, opinionated paragraphs. And just enough meat on the bones to convince you that the authors have come across their sources in more than a passing way, but use them as broadly as possible to achieve a certain mindset in the reader.
And the thing is, I do resonate with the basic point of the book – of the supposed counterculture in society being nothing more than a stance that is easily marketable back to the same people who purport to belong to it. However, this book is so poorly written as to make that point diffuse enough to me to forget what we’re even talking about while reading it. The word "counterculture" in Nation of Rebels start appearing more and more like some vague boogeyman that invokes disdain and ridicule in the author’s prose, rather than being a more incisive look at how it exists in society.
Of course, if any of you bother with reading it, I’d appreciate your views. Chances are I’ll slog through it, just for the sake of completion, and it’d be great to have a dialogue about it.
posted by Stefush at 8:38 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home