false 1822711 0375423745 9780375423741 561 200 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1188838347m/1822711.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1822711.The_Age_of_American_Unreason 259719 Susan Jacoby 882 264 3 2 false Thu Jun 12 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Tue May 06 13:02:49 -0700 2008 Wed Jun 11 21:23:47 -0700 2008 Her willingness to express not just amusement but alarm at the inability of President Bush and others to speak properly makes legitimate criticism of the imperfect grammar displayed in the book. Overall, her grammatical accuracy is undoubtedly higher than the average writer's, but the (not undue) emphasis she places on the written word leads one to expect perfection in form as well as content.
The content of some of her arguments, though, also leaves something to be desired. Toward the end of her book, on page 297, she says, "The general decline in American civic, cultural, and scientific literacy has encouraged political polarization because the field of debate is often left to those who care most intensely - with an out-of-the-mainstream passion - about a specific political and cultural agenda." The rest of the paragraph does nothing to elucidate or support her statement. The meaning of the statement remains uncertain - is the passion directed toward an out-of-the-mainstream agenda, or is the degree to which the agenda is cared-about merely out-of-the-mainstream in its intensity? If she meant the latter, is there evidence that caring most intensely about a specific agenda leads to polarization of the field of the debate? A good case could certainly be made - but the case should be presented to the reader rather than the conclusion offered as forgone fact. If she meant the latter, where is the evidence that those who care most intensely tend to possess out-of-the-mainstream agendas - and if it is so, where is the speculation on the causes of this phenomenon? Whichever interpretation is correct, her proposition is intriguing, but unsupported. The argument deserves at least a journal article's worth of words, but she refers us to none.
As counter-intuitive (and perhaps anti-intellectual) as it seems, Jacocy makes her best points through anecdotes, as in her story of a stalled subway ride with a brilliant old British man who lectures were enthusiastically about the ideal relationship for one to have with the Greek classics. When the train finally pulls into the station, a "scruffy" (read: plebian) young dude comments to them on how cool it was to listen to his diatribe, and Jacoby rightly notes that, if the incident had occured a decade later, after "the proliferation of headphones and personal listening devices... Philip's young admirer would probably have been walled off in a private world of noise." Even though she fails to acknowledge the very real value of creating a private world , especially of music, from time to time, she did provide me with the first resonating argument I've heard for turning off my iPod once in a while.
The book is divided into chapters, at first roughly chronological and tracing America's history in relation to intellectualism, and later noting a number of overlapping themes in recent and contemporary American unreason. Certain chapters were markedly more engaging to me than others (The way we lived then: intellect and ignorance in a young nation; Middlebrow culture from noon to twilight; Junk thought; The culture of distraction; and Public life: defining dumbness downward were the good ones), although I learned even from the chapters that were harder to get through (notably, the chapter called "Reds, pinkos, fellow travelers" was a less spell-binding read but taught me a lot I should have known about intellectualism's (and America's) relationship to Communism in the 1930s-1950s).
The other way I know that this book has gotten under my skin, other than that I'm writing such a long review of it, is by the near-anger I felt this afternoon when I postulated to my coworkers that perhaps we will need to improve the quality of the American education before we can pass good climate change legislation, because the public needs to be willing and able to read and comprehend multiple sentences - paragraphs even - of summary and analysis in order to understand the impetus and effects of putting a price on carbon, and my coworkers - both of whom have more political and campaign experience than I do - countered that, rather, we needed to make the laws simpler. Not even the message, but the actual laws. One explained to me that it's a common misperception that more-educated people gravitate toward complexity because it is inherently better, when in fact simplicity and "common sense" are often the better metrics by which to judge laws and other important bodies of thought. I'm all for a unified theory of the universe, but legislation is complicated for good reasons, not least among them is the fact that it almost inevitably creates real winners and losers. Rather than ignoring that reality and hoping the opposition doesn't pick up on it, we should be eager to explain the complexities of policy to the public - and they should be eager to understand (Jacoby uses the excellent example of Roosevelt's urging Americans to follow along on a map during his weekly address soon after Pearl Harbor - an address to which 80% of American adults tuned in). We should expect the average American to engage in thought rather than passively accept the 8-second soundbite messages he's offered by mainstream politicians and media - and we should give him the education he needs to engage in that thought. It was heartening to hear a smart, sane, pragmatic voice affirm this instinct.
In short, this is probably a book worth reading. It might make you angry, it might make you guilty, it might make you indignant. It probably won't bore you, at least not usually, and you will probably learn something.
Lastly, thanks to Andrew Baird who let me borrow this book and keep it for an inordinate amount of time (probably related to the fact that the beginning is the slow part!)]]>