Tracey's review
Motel of the Mysteries
by David Macaulay
Tracey's review
Motel of the Mysteries by David Macaulay
Tracey's review
rating:
For fun last night, I re-read Motel of the Mysteries by David Macaulay. (Didn't take long - it's only about 100 pages, at least half of which are illustrations.) Long before he was teaching us about The Way Things Work - Macaulay was subtly skewering pop culture.
A parody of the Egyptology of the late 19th/early 20th century, this short book posits that in 1985, North America was inundated with a flood of junk mail and condensed smog that buried the continent. Roughly two centuries later, excavations began. This is the story of Howard Carson's discovery of the Motel of the Mysteries ("Toot & C'mon") and the bizarre rituals practiced within, including chanting into the Sacred Urn, aligning the bodies of the dead towards the Great Altar so they may use the Sacred Communicator (marked with MovieA and MovieB).
The pen & ink drawings add immensely to the atmosphere and tone - the book was funny when I first encountered it about 20 years ago - now I see the satire as...more
A parody of the Egyptology of the late 19th/early 20th century, this short book posits that in 1985, North America was inundated with a flood of junk mail and condensed smog that buried the continent. Roughly two centuries later, excavations began. This is the story of Howard Carson's discovery of the Motel of the Mysteries ("Toot & C'mon") and the bizarre rituals practiced within, including chanting into the Sacred Urn, aligning the bodies of the dead towards the Great Altar so they may use the Sacred Communicator (marked with MovieA and MovieB).
The pen & ink drawings add immensely to the atmosphere and tone - the book was funny when I first encountered it about 20 years ago - now I see the satire as...more
