Review - The Homepage of Dr. David Lavery

Review Cogito, Ergo Sum: The Life of René Descartes
Richard
Watson
Boston:
David
R.
Godine,
2002,
375
pages
In
his
1580
essay
“Of
Repentence,”
Michel
de
Montaigne
wrote,
“If
I
had
been
able
to
see
Erasmus
in
other
days,
it
would
have
been
hard
for
me
not
to
take
for
adages
and
apothegms
everything
he
said
to
his
valet
and
his
hostess.
We
imagine
much
more
appropriately
an
artisan
on
the
toilet
seat
or
on
his
wife
than
a
great
president,
venerable
by
his
demeanor
and
his
ability.
It
seems
to
us
that
they
do
not
stoop
from
their
lofty
thrones
even
to
live.”
More
than
four
hundred
years
later,
Richard
Watson
notes
in
Cogito,
Ergo
Sum:
The
Life
of
René
Descartes
that
“We
are
so
in
need
of
squeaky‐clean
heroes
that
we
present
our
great
thinkers
as
Paradigms
of
Truth
and
Virtue
rather
than
as
the
cranks
they
really
were.
Of
course
great
men
have
to
get
only
one
or
two
major
things
right
for
people
to
forget
the
hundreds
of
things
they
got
wrong.”
On
18
January
1982,
a
member
of
the
extremist
Animal
Liberation
Front
slashed
a
portrait
in
London’s
Wellcome
Art
Gallery
with
a
knife
and
escaped
without
being
caught.
The
victim
was
a
representation
of
René
Descartes,
who,
as
the
ALF
would
later
proudly
point
out,
was
also
one
of
the
founders
of
modern
vivisection.
In
a
new,
aspiring‐to‐be‐definitive,
forty‐years‐in‐the‐making
biography
of
the
father
of
modern
philosophy,
Richard
Watson
makes
use
of
subtler
weapons
in
ripping
to
shreds
received
opinion
of
the
French
thinker.
Offering
the
first
life
of
Descartes
in
nearly
a
century
to
be
based
on
substantial
new
research,
Watson
is
through‐and‐through—as
he
readily
admits
in
the
introduction—“skeptical.”
Iconoclastically
disenchanted
with
the
centuries‐old
coverup
by
the
“Saint
Descartes
Protection
Society,”
he
blasphemes
regularly,
presenting
strong,
inferential
evidence
against
many
a
treasured
Cartesian
myth.
We
learn
that
Descartes
was
probably
not
the
late‐sleeping
“chambriste”
at
La
Flèche,
the
Jesuit
school
he
attended
for
eight
years;
that
the
legend
of
his
fateful
first
meeting
with
Isaac
Beeckman,
the
polymath
who
would
prove
so
influential
on
The Collected Works of David Lavery 2
Descartes’
developing
scientific
interests,
is
just
legend;
that
the
location
of
the
10
November
1619
“Pentacost
of
Reason”
(in
Jacques
Maritain’s
memorable
phrase)—
the
night
of
Descartes’
famous
seminal
dreams—is
quite
likely
misidentified;
that
Descartes
almost
certainly
did
not,
like
a
demented
Terry
Southern
character,
seduce
a
chambermaid
in
order
to
study
the
mechanism
of
reproduction;
that
it
is
doubtful
his
father’s
supposed
denunciation
of
his
son,
“Celui‐la'
n'e'tait
qu'a'
se
faire
relier
en
veau”
("He
is
fit
for
nothing
but
having
himself
bound
in
calf"),
was
ever
spoken;
that
most
of
the
existing
portraits,
including
the
one
in
the
Wellcome,
may
be
inauthentic.
(The
most
likely
bona
fide
likeness,
by
Jan‐Baptist
Weenix,
graces
Cogito’s
cover.)
Perhaps
most
surprisingly,
we
learn
that
Baillet’s
often
psychoanalyzed
versions
of
the
dreams
are
probably
made
out
of
whole
cloth.
Throughout
Cogito,
Ergo
Sum,
Watson
leaves
us
in
no
doubt
about
his
own
opinion
of
his
subject.
In
an
introductory
chapter
(“The
Curse
of
Cartesianism”)
and
a
conclusion
(“The
Ghost
in
the
Machine
Fights
the
Last
Battle
for
the
Human
Soul”),
he
joins
the
company
of
such
anti‐Cartesians
as
Maritain,
Johann
von
Hamann,
Giambattista
Vico,
Karl
Jaspers,
Morris
Berman,
Allen
Wheelis,
Susan
Bordo,
Marjorie
Grene,
William
Barrett,
and
Arthur
Koestler
in
blaming
the
multiple
failures
of
modernity
on
Descartes’
methodological
legacy:
“The
modern
world
is
Cartesian,
then,”
Watson
insists,
“not
because
it
led
professional
philosophers
to
seek
certainty
(and
to
end
up
peering
into
their
own
navels)
but
because
Descartes’s
method
of
analytic
reasoning
allows
ordinary
people
to
be
masters
and
possessors
of
nature.
Descartes
made
control
easy,
step
by
step.”
Watson
even
calls
Descartes
names—
many
names:
“the
father
of
machismo,”
“the
most
vilified
innovator
this
side
of
Karl
Marx,”
“a
drone,
a
family
parasite,”
“a
proud,
excitable,
egotistic
little
man.”
Expert
at
debunking
the
myths
of
Descartes,
Watson
is
equally
skilled
at
uncovering
fresh
insights
about
one
of
the
most
examined
figures
in
the
history
of
thought.
We
learn
about
how
Descartes
was
probably
toilet
trained,
his
likely
height
(five
feet
one
or
two),
the
governing
logistics
of
his
many
moves
in
the
Netherlands,
the
rationale
for
his
obsequious
correspondence
with
his
brilliant
critic
Princess
Elisabeth
of
Bohemia,
the
likely
breed
of
his
dog
Monsieur
Grott
(“Mister
Scratch,”
Watson
remarks,
was—given
his
master’s
fondness
for
vivisection—quite
lucky
to
have
been
sent
back
to
France
from
the
Netherlands),
and
about
Descartes’
almost
certain
fascination
with
the
Rosicrucians.
We
learn,
too,
that
Descartes
may
have
been
the
first
to
describe
the
conditioned
reflex,
probably
slept
in
the
nude,
may
have
been
a
mathematically
gifted
gambler,
and
likely
smoked
pot.
The Collected Works of David Lavery 3
Like
any
good
biographer,
Watson
is
just
as
fascinating
off‐message
as
on.
American
vs.
Dutch
licorice,
porridges,
swaddling,
wet
nurses,
the
use
of
mustard
in
weaning,
the
“Little
Ice
Age”
of
the
seventeenth
century,
childhood
considered
as
a
disease,
diets
at
the
time
of
the
“health
nut”
Descartes,
the
construction
and
maintenance
of
zeedijks
(the
low
walls
the
Dutch
built
to
hold
back
the
sea)—these
and
a
hundred
other
tangential
matters
attract
his
passing
attention,
and
each
visit
remains
memorable.
The
Library
of
Congress
classification
for
Cogito
will
place
it
on
the
shelf
with
other
books
on
Descartes
and
“Philosopher—France—Biography”
(B1873.W38).
But
it
is
much
more,
most
notably
a
travel
book
in
which
Watson
takes
us
along
on
his
scholarly
perambulations,
which
are
geographical,
serendipitous,
and
autobiographical
as
well.
Of
all
the
complex
moments
in
Descartes’
“torn
and
jagged
.
.
.
life
curve”
(the
words
are
Karl
Stern’s
in
The
Flight
From
Woman),
none
presents
a
greater
conundrum
to
a
biographer
than
the
great
French
thinker’s
acceptance
of
Queen
Christina
of
Sweden’s
invitation
to
become
her
tutor,
a
decision
that
would
prove
fatal
when
Descartes
succumbed
to
congestive
heart
failure
in
1650.
Watson
is
more
than
up
to
the
challenge.
In
an
earlier
version
of
his
chapter
titled
“On
the
Zeedijk,”*
Watson
had
offered
an
academic
analogy
for
Descartes’
fatal
choice.
Queen
Christina
was
able
to
"add
Descartes
to
her
collection"
because
he
was
"like
the
professor
in
the
sticks
who
waits
all
his
life
for
the
fabled
call
from
Harvard.
And
lo,
one
day
it
actually
comes.
But
it
is
too
late,
he
is
past
his
prime,
he
is
an
extinct
volcano,
recognition
is
as
much
a
burden
as
a
joy
to
him
now.
But
he
has
to
go
anyway."
Unwilling
to
entirely
reject
such
a
hypothesis,
Watson
now
finds
his
analogy
flawed
(“compared
to
the
French
court,
Stockholm
was
the
minor
leagues—not
Harvard;
Ohio
State
maybe”)
and
offers
a
new,
more
reductionistic,
but
well
argued
elucidation
(“I
believe
Descartes
went
to
Sweden
because
he
was
nearly
flat
broke”),
and
a
more
complex
psychological
interpretation
that
includes
his
own
motivation
as
a
writer.
Two
hundred
seventy
five
pages
into
Cogito
we
realize
conclusively
what
we
have
suspected
throughout—that
Richard
Watson
is
not
entirely
a
disinterested
scholar.
Contemplating
Descartes’
journey
to
the
far
north,
he
makes
a
startling
admission.
Throughout
Cogito,
Watson
often
mixes
both
modes
of
life
writing,
autobiography
and
biography,
foregrounding
the
scene
of
writing
(and
researching),
intruding
into
his
narration
to
speak
to
us
in
person
in
a
colloquial
style.
(Watson
is
certainly
the
first
biographer
of
Descartes
to
use
the
word
“Yech”
or
to
state,
in
the
The Collected Works of David Lavery 4
context
of
the
Cartesian
debate
about
the
souls
of
animals,
“Jesus
didn’t
die
for
no
stinking
dogs!”
or
to
relate
a
Morris
Raphael
Cohen
Descartes
joke
with
all
the
shtick
of
a
Borscht
belt
veteran.)
When
he
is
about
to
go
into
elaborate
detail
about
genealogical
matters
or
family
finances,
Watson
warns
readers
(whose
attention
he
hopes
to
keep)
that
what
follows
will
likely
be
boring.
And,
contrary
to
generic
norms,
the
biographer’s
wife
Pat
becomes
an
important
character,
his
fellow
climber
on
a
perilous
journey
in
the
Alps
in
search
of
a
Descartes
locale,
the
skeptical
spouse
who
questions
his
plan
to
reenact
Descartes’
journey
to
Sweden,
the
woman
who
joined
him
on
trips
to
Lourdes
“just
to
see
the
show.”
(“The
procession
of
the
cripples,”
Watson
observes,
“is
fabulous.”).
But
up
until
Chapter
XIII,
Watson
has
not
been
this
personal,
this
confessional.
“Once
you
reach
this
stage
of
awareness
in
life,”
he
explains,
thinking
of
the
mental
state
in
which
Descartes
found
himself
in
the
late
1640s,
you
can
never
recover
timelessness—not
even
in
the
most
idyllic
moments.
Gone
forever
is
that
sense
of
vast
and
endless
horizons
that
thoughtlessly
framed
your
life
before.
The
transition
takes
place
at
different
times
for
different
people.
I
am
sixty‐nine
(having
lived
already
more
than
a
dozen
years
longer
than
Descartes),
and
it
seems
to
me
that
sometime
between
forty‐five
and
fifty,
I
began
to
calculate
how
much
time
I
was
spending
doing
this
and
that.
I
started
eliminating
projects
that
I
had
undertaken
without
thought
in
the
past,
before
the
change.
There
comes
a
time
when
one
begins
to
worry
whether
there
will
be
time,
not
just
to
do
all
the
things
one
wants
to
do
but
time
to
finish
even
one
last
good
one,
like
writing
this
book.
Historian
and
biographer
Edmond
Morris’
authorized
biography
of
Ronald
Reagan,
Dutch
(1999),
provoked
substantial
controversy
by
including
a
fictional
version
of
the
author
as
a
participant‐observer
in
various
events
of
our
fortieth
President’s
life,
events
which
occurred
long
before
Morris
had
become
Reagan’s
official
Boswell.
How
dare
a
biographer
make
use
of
an
imaginary
persona
in
a
supposedly
scholarly
work,
critics
and
pundits
questioned?
The
inextricable
role
of
the
fictional
in
the
making
and
interpretation
of
autobiography
has
been
recognized
for
decades,
but
biographers,
we
still
hope
to
convince
ourselves,
are
in
no
way
akin
to
novelists.
Watson,
however,
is
not
just
a
distinguished
professor
of
philosophy
at
Washington
University
in
St.
Louis
and
a
The Collected Works of David Lavery 5
Cartesian
scholar;
he
is
also
a
novelist
(The
Runner,
Under
Plowman’s
Floor,
Niagara)
and
a
non‐fiction
writer
(The
Longest
Cave,
The
Philosopher’s
Diet).
So
it
should
not
surprise
us
that
he
makes
use
of
all
the
tools
at
his
disposal,
even
the
biographically
unorthodox,
in
order
to
tell
his
story.
The
narrator
of
Jean‐Paul
Sartre’s
novel
Nausea,
Roquentin,
seeks
to
write
a
biography
of
the
eighteenth‐century
figure
M.
Rollebon,
but
he
finally
abandons
the
project—for
how
can
a
man
who
finds
his
own
existence
unfathomable
pretend
to
write
the
life
of
a
spectre
out
of
history?
If
Richard
Watson
experienced
Roquentin’s
dilemma
during
the
multi‐decade
creation
of
Cogito,
Ergo
Sum,
he
certainly
did
not
capitulate.
With
astonishing
perseverance,
rich
historical
imagination,
and
revelatory
skepticism,
he
has
succeeded
in
producing
a
life
that
dethrones
both
biographer
and
subject,
making
Richard
Watson
the
biographer
more
human
and
Descartes
the
crank
more
real.
Review
Jeremy G. Butler, Television: Critical
Methods and Applications (Lawrence
Erlbaum Associates, 2002; 396 pages)
The
second
edition
of
Jeremy
G.
Butler’s
Television:
Critical
Methods
and
Applications
is
a
textbook
that
succeeds
superbly
on
a
number
of
fronts.
It
covers
its
vast
subject
with
true
respect
for
its
complexity.
Though
the
presumed
reader
is
a
college
or
university
undergraduate
taking
a
course
in
television—Butler’s
book,
covering
as
it
does
both
critical
and
technical
aspects
of
the
medium
in
depth,
could
certainly
be
beneficially
adopted
in
a
wide
variety
of
such
courses—much
of
its
excellence
might
well
be
lost
on
such
captive
audiences.
I
read
it
not
just
as
the
“text
in
this
class”
but
as
a
comprehensive
introduction
to
the
medium
and
discovered
valuable
insights
on
almost
every
page.
Even
when
Television
is
merely
summarizing
and
establishing
what
is
already
well
known,
it
does
so
with
such
enviable
clarity
and
sound
organization
that
I
continued
to
read
with
real
admiration.
(Television,
it
should
be
noted,
is
partly
a
collaborative
effort:
chapters
on
“A
History
of
Television
Style”
and
“Music
Television”
were
authored
by
Gary
A.
Copeland
and
Blaine
Allen,
respectively.)
Though
it
may
be
occasionally
too
difficult
for
lazy
undergraduates,
it
approaches
all
of
its
many
subjects
with
a
precision
of
purpose
and
style,
almost
never
lapsing
into
jargon.
Its
application
of
Bakhtinian
dialogism
and
the
methods
of
semiotics
is
executed
unobtrusively
but
with
substantial
results.
The
name
of
Mikhail
Bakhtin,
for
example,
doesn’t
appear
anywhere
in
Butler’s
book,
and
yet
the
influential
Russian
theorist’s
shadow
is
perceptible
throughout.
Polysemy,
heterogeneity,
discourses—these
Bakhtinian
terms
appear
with
regularity
in
a
book
grounded
in
the
basic
faith
that
the
“cultural
forum”
of
television
enables
the
interplay
of
a
wide
variety
of
voices
and
visions.
The
all‐encompassing
content
of
Butler’s
book
is,
it
must
be
admitted,
almost
overwhelming.
A
book
that
has
something
substantial
to
say
about
topics
ranging
from
local
newscasts
to
Gerald
McBoing
Boing,
the
history
of
the
remote
control,
the
intricacies
of
the
Nielsens,
the
function
of
syntagms,
panning
and
tilting,
Anna
Kournikova,
TelePrompTers,
method
acting,
ensemble
casts,
the
meaning
of
“Burt
The Collected Works of David Lavery 7
Reynold’s”
[sic]
mustache,
the
vocabulary
of
gestures,
Brechtian
distanciation,
mise‐
en‐scene,
chiaroscuro
lighting,
CGI,
technological
manifest
destiny,
Divx,
laugh
tracks,
HDTV,
the
function
of
the
dystopia
in
the
television
commercial,
the
theory
of
the
leisure
class,
and
auteur
theory
(to
name
only
a
paltry
few)
is,
it
goes
without
saying,
no
ordinary
text.
And
yet
Butler
and
his
collaborators
succeed
in
making
these
and
scores
of
other
subjects
comprehensible.
(As
one
who
has
taught
numerous
introduction
to
film
courses
over
the
years,
trying
and
not
liking
all
of
the
texts
on
the
market,
it
struck
me
that
Butler’s
book
even
has
a
very
good
intro
to
film
book
buried
within
it,
though
it
remains
faithful
to
the
medium
of
television
and
never
falls
prey
to
cinema‐envy.
In
the
typical
introduction
to
film
text,
for
example,
we
find
the
obligatory
shot‐by‐shot
breakdown
of
a
scene
from
Battleship
Potemkin—
or
Citizen
Kane,
or
Bonnie
and
Clyde.
In
Television
it
is
a
conversation
between
Dr.
Joel
Fleischman
and
Maggie
O’Connell
on
Northern
Exposure
that
is
cogently
decoupaged.)
The
first
edition
of
Butler’s
book
was
highly
praised.
Its
second
has
added
much
to
make
it
even
more
valuable,
including
a
new
chapter
on
television
commercials,
updated
examples
and
references,
new
drawings,
and
a
well‐conceived
and
useful
website
(TVCrit.com),
offering
additional
resources
for
teachers
and
students.
Television
comes
only
in
black
and
white
and
is
not
nearly
as
glossy
as
some
other
current
media
text
books
(I
am
thinking,
for
example,
of
Richard
Campbell’s
stunning
Media
and
Culture
[Bedford/St.
Martin’s]—though
it
is
hardly
a
competitor),
but
it
is
a
book
of
real
substance.
All
those
who
teach
television
studies
know
how
difficult
it
is
to
secure
respect
for
our
fledgling
discipline.
Books
like
Butler’s,
itself
a
landmark,
may
help
to
put
us
on
the
map.
Review
Nicholas Mirzoeff, Seinfeld, BFI
(BFI TV Classics), 2007.
Given
the
relative
paucity
of
critical
attention
paid
to
the
sitcom—the
lack,
if
you
will,
of
seriousness
the
genre
is
given
in
television
studies—an
insightful
monograph
such
as
Nicholas
Mirzoeff’s
BFI
TV
Classics
book
on
the
American
show
Seinfeld
(NBC,
1989‐1998)
should
be
warmly
welcomed,
and
indeed
the
volume
is
worthy
of
some
praise,
though
Seinfeld’s
appeal
to
the
author
is
as
a
cultural
document,
his
interest
in
it
as
a
television
program
minimal.
More
personal
essay
than
scholarly
investigation,
Seinfeld
turns
out
to
be
in
reality
an
Americanized
British
cultural
studies
professor’s
commandeering
of
US’s
television’s
greatest
show
(according
to
a
TV
Guide
poll)
as
the
basis
for
an
admittedly
Barthesian,
‘mythological’
take
on
race,
gender,
politics,
and
American
humour—especially
the
latter:
‘you
could
learn
about
how
to
be
funny
from
Seinfeld’,
Mirzoeff
explains,
‘and
how
Americans
in
general
had
tried
to
be
funny,
no
small
thing
for
an
immigrant,
especially
a
person
like
myself
who
relies
on
humour
to
negotiate
social
situations’
(p.
5).
While
considering
a
variety
of
topics
and
subtopics,
many
pertinent,
some
tangential
(‘like
Seinfeld,
this
book
takes
pleasure
in
being
digressive
and
discursive’
the
author
warns
us
[p.
4]),
Mirzoeff
shows
himself
to
be
adept
at
placing
the
show
in
its
historical,
social,
and
political
context
(much
is
made,
for
example,
of
its
pre‐
9/11ness);
explaining
the
show’s
surprising
lack
of
offensiveness:
‘Seinfeld
was
not
offensive
as
comedy,
perhaps
because
it
made
its
intent
to
offend
so
obvious’
(p
65);
revealing
(with
a
witty
nod
to
Laura
Mulvey)
how
a
show
once
deemed
‘too
Jewish’
came
instead
to
be
a
manifestation
of
‘Oslo‐era
Jewishness’
(p.
73).
He
argues,
controversially
but
persuasively,
that
the
real
reason
Seinfeld
never
caught
on
in
the
UK
was
anti‐Semitism
(p.
83).
He
pinpoints,
brilliantly,
the
Brechtian
origins
of
the
show’s
audience‐alienating
characters
(p.
86).
Not
all
of
Mirzoeff’s
forays
are
successful.
His
attempt
to
unpack
its
supposed
misogyny
(p.
117),
for
examples,
dies
the
kind
of
death
a
stand‐up
comic
dreads.
The Collected Works of David Lavery 9
Seinfeld
is,
regrettably,
more
than
a
little
careless,
littered
as
it
is
by
minor,
annoying,
and
easily
correctable
errors.
The
actor
who
played
NBC
chief
Russell
Dalrymple
in
Seinfeld
was
Bob
Balaban,
not
‘Bob
Babanal’.
Jerry’s
father’s
Boca
Vista
Retirement
Village
nemesis,
the
man
who
disastrously
gave
our
eponymous
hero
an
astronaut
pen,
was
Jack
Klompus,
not
‘Kloppus’.
Christopher
Reeve’s
Superman
hit
the
big
screen
in
1978,
not
1987
(64).
‘The
Parking
Space’
was
not
the
22
nd
episode
th
of
the
show
but
the
38 (even
Mirzoeff’s
own
‘Broadcast
History’
shows
his
numbering
to
be
incorrect).
It
was
Carson
Daly
of
Last
Call
with
Carson
Daly
and
not
Carson
Kressley
of
Queer
Eye
for
the
Straight
Guy
who
inspired
My
Name
is
Earl’s
karmic
quest
(p.
125).
In
the
sentence
beginning
‘As
the
three
main
actors,
other
than
Seinfeld,
had
extensive
acting
experience
.
.
.
‘
(pp.
27‐28),
of
course
no
italics
are
needed
for
the
actor’s
name.
Other
misidentifications
are
difficult
to
explain:
It
was
the
character
Sidra’s,
not
the
actress
Terry
Hatcher’s,
‘real
and
.
.
.
spectacular’
breasts
that
were
in
question
in
‘The
Implant’
(4.18).
Woody
Allen
is
not
a
‘cinematographer’
(p.
58).
Jean
Baudrillard
and
Umberto
Eco
are
not
philosophers
(p.
46)
in
any
strict
sense
of
the
term.
Wilde’s
The
Picture
of
Dorian
Gray
is
not
a
short
story
(p.
26)
but
a
novel
of
over
80,000
words.
Bungling
such
as
this
subverts
the
book’s
credibility
in
no
small
way.
(Has
BFI
Publishing’s
financial
troubles
resulted
in
the
elimination
of
copy‐
editors?)
Mirzoeff’s
method
brings
into
play
a
number
of
interesting
sources—
sociologists
Frantz
Fanon
and
Norbert
Elias,
for
example,
but
like
an
earlier
BFI
TV
Classics
volume,
Anne
Bilson’s
book
on
Buffy
the
Vampire
Slayer,
Seinfeld
likewise
commits
the
inexcusable
scholarly/critical
sin
of
refusing
to
consult,
let
alone
acknowledge,
the
existence
of
other
work
already
done
on
its
subject.
Early
on
Mirzoeff
admits
to
not
being
a
‘media
studies
specialist’
(p.
3).
Does
he
think
this
absolves
him
of
the
responsibility
to
inquire
fully
into
what
others
have
already
said
about
Seinfeld?—to
undertake
a
basic
literature
search?
Bilson
managed
to
ignore
over
a
score
of
books
and
over
two
hundred
published
articles.
(For
a
full‐fledged
review
of
the
voluminous
literature
inspired
by
Buffy
the
Vampire
Slayer,
see
Rhonda
V.
Wilcox’s
‘In
the
Demon
Section
of
the
Card
Catalogue’
in
this
journal’s
debut
issue
[pp.
37‐48].)
Mirzoeff’s
has
less
to
be
oblivious
of:
a
handful
of
significant
serious
articles,
only
a
couple
of
which
draw
mention,
and
three
books,
one
a
sociological
study
(Tim
Delaney’s
Seinology),
and
two
edited
collections
(one
of
which
is,
in
the
spirit
of
full
disclosure,
my
own),
none
of
which
are
even
acknowledged
to
exist,
T h e C o l l e c t e d W o r k s o f D a v i d L a v e r y 10
even
though
they
cover
much
of
same
territory
he
stakes
out.
‘If
you
make
a
Google
search
for
Seinfeld’,
we
are
told
on
p.
7,
‘most
of
the
results
that
come
up
are
very
dry
articles
referring
to
the
success
of
the
show
as
a
vehicle
for
advertising’.
This
is,
of
course,
untrue
and
smacks
of
bad
faith
in
a
book
written
by
the
Director
of
New
York
University’s
Visual
Culture
Program.
Bibliography
Delaney,
Tim.
Seinology:
The
Sociology
of
Seinfeld.
Amherst,
NY:
Prometheus
Books,
2006.
Irwin,
William,
ed.
Seinfeld
and
Philosophy:
A
Book
About
Everything
and
Nothing.
Chicago:
Open
Court,
2000.
Lavery,
David,
with
Sara
Lewis
Dunne,
eds.
Seinfeld,
Master
of
Its
Domain:
Revisiting
TV’s
Greatest
Sitcom.
New
York:
Continuum,
2006.
Review
The Television Genre Book
Edited by Glen Creeber
BFI Publishing, 2001, 163 pages
The
British
Film
Institute’s
publication
of
the
first
edition
of
Pam
Cook’s
The
Cinema
Book
in
the
mid‐1980s
is
often
recognized
as
a
watershed
in
the
development
of
film
studies.
(A
new
edition
was
published
in
1999.)
Big
(coffee
table
book
format),
comprehensive,
and
cumulative,
the
product
of
many
hands
(a
variety
of
scholars,
including
Annette
Kuhn,
Christine
Gledhill,
Geoffrey
Nowell‐Smith,
contributed,
almost
anonymously,
to
its
authoring
and
editing),
with
a
unique
format
(“gray
box”
entries
on
individual
films
were
interspersed
throughout
the
text),
it
was
a
textbook
example
of
a
paradigm‐making
text.
As
Thomas
Kuhn
observes
in
The
Structure
of
Scientific
Revolutions,
the
development
of
a
prototypical
episteme
customarily
requires
a
definitive,
timely
single
statement
of
what
everyone
takes
to
be
the
truth.
The
Cinema
Book
was
such
a
text:
a
statement,
arriving
after
a
couple
of
decades
of
fervent
debate,
of
“what
we
know
(or
think
we
know)
so
far”
about
film
studies.
The
physical
dimensions
of
Glen
Creeber’s
The
Television
Genre
Book,
also
published
by
the
BFI
(distributed
by
University
of
California
Press
in
the
United
States),
are
a
bit
smaller
than
The
Cinema
Book,
and
it’s
not
even
half
as
thick,
but
it
quite
consciously
intends
(as
the
preface
acknowledges)
to
remind
us
of
its
predecessor.
In
its
multiple
authorship,
its
gray‐box
discussions
(this
time
of
pivotal
television
texts),
its
intent
to
be
wide‐ranging
and
summative,
it
owes
much
to
its
ancestor
text,
though
it
exhibits
little
or
no
anxiety
of
influence
in
doing
so
and
may
well
be
remembered
a
decade
hence
as
holding
a
place
in
the
history
of
television
studies
similar
to
that
of
the
landmark
Cook
book.
The
Television
Genre
Book
is
organized
into
eight
chapters:
“What
is
Genre?,”
“Drama,”
“Soap
Opera,”
“Comedy,”
“Popular
Entertainment,”
“Children's
Television,”
and
“News
and
Documentary.”
Each
section,
in
turn,
is
comprised
of
an
introduction
followed
by
concise
entries
on
sub‐genres
(the
chapter
on
drama,
for
example,
includes
individually‐authored
sections
on
“The
Single
Play,”
“The
Western,”
“The
T h e C o l l e c t e d W o r k s o f D a v i d L a v e r y 12
Action
Series,”
“The
Police
Series,”
“Hospital
Drama,”
“Science
Fiction,”
“Drama‐
Documentary,”
“The
Mini‐Series”
[or
“Miniseries”
as
we
say
in
the
United
States],
“Costume
Drama,”
“The
Teen
Series,”
and
“Post‐modern
Drama”),
as
well
as
gray‐
boxes
on
shows
(both
British
and
American)
from
ER
and
Monty
Python’s
Flying
Circus
to
Jerry
Springer
and
Teletubbies.
Contributors
include
such
figures
as
Toby
Miller,
John
Tulloch
(both
associate
editors
of
the
book),
Steve
Neale,
John
Hartley,
and
Jane
Feuer.
A
total
of
twenty
eight
television
scholars,
primarily
British,
wrote
for
the
book,
many
authoring
more
than
one
entry.
We
find
(among
others)
Neale
and
Graeme
Turner
on
genre,
Robin
Nelson
on
drama,
Miller
on
the
action
series,
Creeber
on
The
Singing
Detective,
Hartley
on
the
sitcom,
Feuer
on
the
“unruly
woman”
sitcom,
Jane
Shattuc
on
The
Oprah
Winfrey
Show,
John
Corner
on
documentary.
In
each
case
individuals
who
have
already
written
books
or
significant
articles
on
the
subject‐at‐hand
offer
succinct
examinations
of
their
special
topics.
The
French
critic
of
lifewriting
Phillipe
Lejeune
has
shown
that
even
the
seemingly
clear‐cut
quasi/para
genre
of
autobiography
is
actually
a
complex
“pact”
(Le
Pacte
autobiographique),
aesthetic,
economic,
narratological,
between
author,
publisher,
and
genre.
The
Television
Genre
Book
offers
a
multi‐faceted
delineation
of
television’s
intricate
genre
pacts.
Under
no
illusion
that
a
neat
and
tidy
systematization
of
an
inherently
dialogical
medium
like
TV
is
either
possible
or
desirable,
it
strives
instead
for
offering
a
comprehensive
portrait
of
the
complexity.
The
point
is
made
early
on
(by
Neale)
that
the
study
of
genre
in
any
aesthetic
domain
serves
as
an
entry
point
into
the
domain
as
a
whole
and
much,
much
more
as
well.
The
“more”
The
Television
Genre
Book
examines
along
the
way
includes
(a
partial
list):
feedback
loops,
postmodernism,
the
telenovela,
emotional
realism,
the
impartiality
of
the
BBC,
quality
TV,
TV
audiences,
seriality,
tabloidism,
dramedy,
hybridization,
the
nature
of
celebrity,
theories
of
humor,
the
difference
between
“gay”
and
“queer,”
cult
TV,
the
Super
Bowl,
sitcoms
as
R
&
D
tools,
violence
.
.
.
The
writing,
for
the
most
part
is
dispassionate
and
methodical
but
almost
never
dull
or
abstruse.
(There
are
exceptions:
I
enjoyed,
for
example,
Toby
Miller’s
memories
of
his
Man
from
Uncle
lunchbox.)
Though
limited
in
scope,
each
entry
seeks
to
be
as
comprehensive
as
possible.
The
bibliographies—both
the
“Recommended
Readings”
at
the
end
of
each
entry
and
the
back‐pages
full
bibliographies
which
accompany
each
chapter—are
uniformly
excellent.
The
book
should
find
a
ready
audience
among
serious
students
of
television
and
will
appeal
as
well
to
fans
of
the
particular
shows
it
examines.
T h e C o l l e c t e d W o r k s o f D a v i d L a v e r y 13
The
Television
Genre
Book
is
not
without
its
faults.
Nitpickers
will
note
that
the
title
of
the
series
(in
the
United
States
at
least)
is
Roswell,
not
Roswell
High;
that
Buffy
the
Vampire
Slayer
does
not
include
even
one
character
who
is
a
human/alien
hybrid
(perhaps
the
writer
had
Roswell
or
The
X‐Files
in
mind?);
that
Twin
Peaks
was
not
by
any
definition
a
miniseries
(though
some
have
suggested
that
it
might
well
have
benefited
from
a
predetermined
run);
that
Friends
and
Seinfeld
could
not
have
competed
with
each
other
for
ratings
since
both
were
on
NBC.
Grammarians
will
also
note
an
error
or
two.
Writing
in
The
Chronicle
of
Higher
Education
in
1988,
Robert
J.
Thompson,
now
Director
of
the
Center
for
the
Study
of
Popular
Television
at
Syracuse
University,
recalled
the
one‐time
dearth
of
serious
writing
on
televison:
"Even
when
I
was
in
graduate
school
in
1981
.
.
.
there
was
only
half
a
shelf
on
the
stuff."
The
situation
has
changed
markedly
in
twenty
years.
The
Television
Genre
Book
single‐handedly
will
direct
the
reader
to
several
shelves
of
valuable
television
criticism
and
will—
along
with
its
future
editions—
occupy
a
prominent,
top‐shelf
position
in
the
years
to
come.
Review Simon
Blaxland‐de
Lange,
Owen
Barfield:
Romanticism
Comes
of
Age,
A
Biography
(Forest
Row:
Temple
Lodge,
2006),
£22.00
(ISBN
9781902636771)
For
those
of
us
who
have
worked
to
keep
the
memory
of
the
late
British
lawyer,
philologist,
disciple
of
Rudolf
Steiner,
proponent
of
the
evolution
of
consciousness,
and
least
well‐known
Inkling
Owen
Barfield
(1898‐1997)
alive
and
his
brilliant
work
better
known,
Simon
Blaxland
de
Lange’s
“biography”
is
a
mixed
blessing.
Since
some
Barfieldians
believed
Blaxland‐de
Lange,
a
special
needs
educator
who
became
his
subject’s
confidante
in
his
last
years,
an
unlikely
choice
as
official
biographer,
his
book
promised
to
be
controversial.
Owen
Barfield:
Romanticism
Comes
of
Age
turned
out
to
be
a
solid
analysis
of
Barfield’s
key
ideas.
To
deem
it
a
biography,
however,
is
a
bit
misleading.
It
begins
and
ends
as
life‐writing,
grounded
in‐part
in
heretofore
unavailable
access
to
correspondence
and
interviews
with
its
subject,
but
Blaxland‐de
Lange
concedes
early‐on
the
difficulty
of
keeping
his
focus
on
Barfield
the
man,
a
modest
individual
who
always
sought
to
belittle
interest
in
the
author
and
redirect
it
to
his
books,
and
begins
to
turn
his
attention
to
his
central
ideas.
Imagination,
idolatry,
participation,
R.U.P.
(residue
of
unresolved
positivism)—these
and
other
key
Barfieldian
notions
receive
ample
treatment.
This
central
part
of
the
book—over
two
thirds
of
its
300+
pages—offers
as
good,
and
as
comprehensive,
an
introduction
to
Barfield’s
complex
thought
as
any
study
now
in
print.
In
some
of
the
book’s
best
pages,
Blaxland‐de
Lange
offers
as
well
engaging
portrayals
of
Barfield’s
friendships—both
personal
and
epistolary—with
such
st
individuals
as
“1 Friend”
Cecil
Harwood,
“2
nd
friend”
C.
S.
Lewis,
novelist
Saul
Bellow,
poets
Howard
Nemerov
and
Walter
de
la
Mare,
physicist
David
Bohm.
In
its
few
purely
biographical
pages,
Blaxland‐de‐Lange
succeeds
in
tantalizing
us
with
some
startling
glimpses
into
Barfield’s
troubled
marriage
to
Maude
Douie
Barfield
(1888‐1980),
a
decade
his
senior
and,
even
more
than
his
fellow
“great
debate”
opponent
Lewis,
an
anthroposophy
skeptic—and
his
relationships
with
other
women.
T h e C o l l e c t e d W o r k s o f D a v i d L a v e r y 15
Such
revelations,
however,
never
come
clearly
into
focus
in
an
oddly
organized
book:
Part
Two:
“Elucidation
and
Recognition
The
Lecturer
(1964‐97)”
precedes
Part
Three:
“”The
Forging
of
a
Key:
The
Man
of
Letters
(1919‐1964)”—for
reasons
that
never
become
entirely
clear.
A
36
page
plot
summary
of
Barfield’s
unpublished
novel
English
People,
for
example,
provides
welcome
knowledge
of
a
virtually
unknown
side
of
Barfield’s
work,
and
yet
it’s
placement
in
the
overall
flow
of
the
book
leaves
the
reader
puzzled
as
to
its
inclusion.
“This
book
is
intended
to
be
as
far
as
possible
the
kind
of
biographical
study
that
Owen
Barfield
would
have
wished
to
appear
after
his
death”
(1)—these
words,
the
book’s
first,
tell
us
much
of
the
intent
of
what
is
to
follow.
Barfield
is
not
the
first
writer
or
thinker
concerned
with
dictating
the
way
he
is
remembered
by
seeking
to
control
his
biography.
T.
S.
“Tom”
Eliot,
Barfield’s
London
literary
acquaintance
from
the
1930s,
was,
justifiably,
nervous
that
his
admirers
would
learn
of
certain
skeletons
in
his
closet
(or
sanitariums);
Freud
and
Nietzsche,
according
to
Carl
Pletsch,
began
leading
an
“autobiographical
life”
long
before
they
were
famous,
judiciously
editing
in
advance
what
might
be
discovered
about
them
should
they
become
famous.
Owen
Barfield
did
not
anticipate
fame
in
any
comparable
way
and
yet,
even
in
his
final
years,
he
seemed
nevertheless
determined
to
keep
the
focus
on
his
iconoclastic
ideas.
He
was
well
aware
he
might
be
forgotten—a
possibility
that,
over
ten
years
after
his
passing,
seems
more,
rather
than
less,
likely.
Blaxland‐de
Lange’s
book
is
faithful
to
his
final
wishes,
but
it
is
not
what
we
really
need:
a
full‐
fledged
life
that
seeks
to
truly
place
Barfield,
the
person
and
the
mind,
in
the
th
context
of
the
20 century
he
witnessed
almost
in
its
entirety.
Works
Cited
Pletsch,
Carl.
Young
Nietzsche.
New
York:
Free
Press,
1992.
Review Bill
Osgerby
and
Anna
Gough‐Yates,
eds.
Action
TV:
Tough
Guys,
Smooth
Operator
and
Foxy
Chicks.
London
and
New
York:
Routledge,
2001.
260
pages.
In
a
soon‐to‐be‐published
book,
subtitled
“Predicting/Preventing
the
TV
Discourse
of
Tomorrow,”
a
group
of
like‐minded
academics
offers
parodies
of
non‐existent
(or
at
least
not
yet
existent)
television
criticism:
a
critique
of
a
make‐believe
serious
study
of
Baywatch,
an
appraisal
of
the
new
book
Beavis,
Butt‐head,
and
Bakhtin,
assessment
of
“the
year’s
work”
in
Teletubbies
studies.
At
first
glance
Osgerby
and
Gough‐Yates’s
collection
of
essays
on
the
action
television
genre
would
appear
to
have
escaped
from
the
pages
of
that
book.
With
essays
bearing
titles
like
“’Who
loves
ya,
baby’:
Kojak,
action
and
the
great
society”
(Paul
Cobley),
“’A
lone
crusader
in
the
dangerous
world’:
heroics
of
science
and
technology
in
Knight
Rider”
(Nickianne
Moody),
and
“Angels
in
chains?
Feminism,
feminity
and
consumer
culture
in
Charlie’s
Angels”
(Gough‐Yates),
Action
TV
could
itself
be
mistaken
as
parodic
in
intent.
"Criticisms
of
Television
Studies,”
Geraghty
and
Lusted
accurately
observe
in
The
Television
Studies
Book,
“are
often
based
on
a
confusion
between
what
is
studied
and
the
act
of
studying,
and
so
it
is
assumed
that
because
some
television
is
sloppy,
badly
researched
and
offensive
so
too
is
its
study."
No
doubt
such
a
confusion
might
well
be
at
work
in
my
response
to
this
study
of
a
television
genre
that
gets
no
respect,
but
the
book’s
intentionally
garish,
orange
cover,
with
its
photo
of
Farrah
Fawcett
in
mid‐kick,
certainly
encourages
such
a
first
impression,
as
does
its
contributors
page,
on
which
the
author
of
“’Who’s
the
cat
that
won’t
cop
out?’:
Black
masculinity
in
American
action
series
of
the
sixties
and
seventies”
is
said
to
have
“just
slapped
her
husband
for
reminding
her
that
she
sported
an
afro
and
a
stripy
beige
tanktop
in
the
1970s.”
To
actually
read
the
essays
assembled
in
Action
TV,
however,
confirms
the
serious
intent
of
its
contributors,
even
though
many
of
the
essays
exhibit
a
certain
playfulness.
Many,
in
fact,
are
labored
exercises
in
cultural
studies.
Dedicated
to
the
proposition
that
action
television
is
“a
genre
that
is
not
only
constituent
in
wider
T h e C o l l e c t e d W o r k s o f D a v i d L a v e r y 17
patterns
of
social,
economic
and
political
change,
but
which
provides
audiences
with
an
avenue
through
which
to
articulate
meaningful
cultural
responses
to
these
patterns
of
change”
(3).
Some
utilize
over
half
of
their
length
to
set‐up
contexts
(historical,
media,
popular
culture,
economic)
for
examination
of
a
series
and
then
spend
little
time
the
series
in
question.
John
Storey’s
“The
sixties
in
the
nineties:
pastiche
or
hyperconsciousness,”
the
book’s
closing
essay,
to
cite
but
one
example,
has
virtually
nothing
to
say
about
television,
though
it
is
a
first‐rate
examination
of
the
complexities
of
the
PoMo.
(The
relevance
of
Martin
Pumphrey’s
“The
games
we
play(ed):
TV
Westerns,
memory
and
masculinity”
is
of
a
different
kind:
though
a
readable
and
discerning
essay
on
a
distinctive
film
and
television
genre,
the
essay
fails
to
make
explicit
the
rationale
for
its
inclusion
in
a
book
on
the
action
genre.)
The
quality
of
writing
in
Action
TV
is,
as
is
often
the
case
in
collections
such
as
this,
uneven.
The
reader
must
slog
through
mud
like
the
following:
“Yet
the
television
production,
Kojak,
in
spite
of
its
many
episodes,
could
not
have
built
up
such
a
complex
site
of
investment—especially
so
quickly—without
considerable
work
by
readers.
These
readers
would,
of
course,
themselves,
be
caught
up
in
the
relations
of
history
and
the
specific
reading
formation.
One
major
constituent
of
this
latter
is
the
concept
of
genre
and
the
fact
that
Kojak
was
part
of
the
genre
which
concerns
itself
with
the
police”
(my
italics;
56).
The
book,
is,
indeed
the
“site”
of
much
such
wearisome
siting.
It
is
the
sort
of
book
in
which
the
worst
abuses
of
contemporary
critical
discourse
(“Knight
Rider
can
be
seen
as
one
of
the
first
popular
texts
to
visualize
and
narrativize
[sic]
effectively
the
potential
of
these
technologies
to
transform
daily
life”
[my
italics
71])
co‐exist
with
archaisms
(“Whilst
the
vehicles
featured
in
Knight
Rider’s
contemporary
rivals
were
foregrounded
as
almost
magical
agents
of
justice
.
.
.
“[my
italics;
73]).
Some
of
the
subjects
of
individual
essays
are
likely
to
be
of
little
interest
to
American
readers.
All
of
Action
TV’s
contributors
are
British,
and,
not
surprisingly
a
good
number
of
pages
are
devoted
to
British
television
series
never
seen
here:
the
short‐
lived
The
Persuaders!
and
Jason
King
(both
1971‐1972),
and
The
Professionals
(1977‐83).
And
it
might
well
have
enhanced
the
book’s
credibility
to
have
had
at
least
a
token
US
television
scholar
or
two
examine
quintessentially
American
series.
Still,
some
of
the
essays
assembled
in
Action
TV
are
indeed
valuable.
Co‐
editor
Gough‐Yates’
reading
of
Charlie’s
Angels,
for
example,
is
nicely
done,
and
Elizabeth
Withey’s
“TV
gets
jazzed:
the
evolution
of
action
TV
theme
music”
is
a
worthy
contribution
to
the
meager
bibliography
on
television
music).
Considered
as
a
T h e C o l l e c t e d W o r k s o f D a v i d L a v e r y 18
whole,
the
book
at
least
provides
an
historical
scaffolding
for
future
examination
of
a
neglected,
critically
snubbed
television
form,
and
for
that
the
book
is
and
probably
will
remain
of
some
value.
Review Astrid
Diener,
The
Role
of
Imagination
in
Culture
and
Society:
Owen
Barfield’s
Early
Work.
Leipzig
Explorations
in
Literature
and
Culture
6.
Glienicke/Berlin
and
Cambridge:
Galda
+
Wilch
Verlag,
2002.
224
pages
Readers
of
this
journal
may
recognize
the
name
of
the
author
of
this
new
monograph
investigating
the
early
work
of
Owen
Barfield
(1898‐1997),
Inkling
fellow‐
traveler,
C.
S.
Lewis’s
“second
friend,”
and
one
of
the
most
neglected
important
thinkers
of
the
20th
Century.
Her
interview
with
Barfield
(included
as
an
appendix
in
this
volume)
appeared
originally
in
Mythlore
in
1995
(20:4:
14‐19).
But
there
was
little
in
that
brief
conversation,
mostly
focusing
on
the
contemporary
context
of
Barfield’s
Poetic
Diction,
that
would
predict
this
important,
ground‐
breaking
study.
Readers
of
Barfield
will
no
doubt
be
familiar
with
his
repeated
insistence
that,
in
his
seventy
year
career
as
a
writer,
he
had
never
significantly
changed:
unlike
a
Wittgenstein
or
Heidegger,
“there
is
no
‘late
Barfield’
and
‘early
Barfield,’”
as
he
puts
it
in
a
letter
quoted
by
Diener
(17).
Diener’s
book,
originally
a
D.
Phil.
dissertation
at
Oxford,
and
written
in
the
author’s
second
language,
casts
serious
doubt
on
this
received
wisdom.
She
careful
considers
almost
completely
ignored
pieces
written
by
Barfield
in
the
20s
and
early
30s,
during
a
period
after
graduation
from
Oxford
but
before
he
abandoned
his
dream
of
becoming
a
full‐time
writer
to
join
his
father’s
law
firm
in
London.
Major
works—History
in
English
Words
(1926),
Poetic
Diction
(1928)—are
not
what
captures
Diener’s
attention.
She
dwells
instead
on
short
fiction
like
“Dope,”
“The
Devastated
Area,”
“Seven
Letters,”
the
novel
The
Silver
Trumpet
(Barfield’s
first
published
book
[1925]),
and
non‐fiction
like
“Some
Elements
of
Decadence,”
a
review
of
Wilfred
Owen’s
poetry,
“The
Lesson
of
South
Wales,”
Danger,
Ugliness
and
Waste.
In
the
process
she
introduces
us
to
a
writer
which
even
the
small
circle
of
Barfieldians
are
not
likely
to
recognize.
Take
the
following
passage
from
Danger,
Ugliness,
and
Waste,
a
pamphlet
Barfield
wrote
in
1925
(quoted
by
Diener
[159‐60]).
[W]e
may
talk
of
education
and
of
university
extension,
and
we
may
be
rightly
proud
of
these
things;
but
we
know
all
the
time
in
our
hearts
that
without
a
general
spread
of
means
and
leisure
the
world
of
culture
must
remain
for
ever
the
bitter
farce
it
sometimes
seems—an
everlasting
Decameron
set
in
an
everlasting
plague.
This
social
conscience
of
ours
may
be
a
comparatively
recent
addition
to
our
hearts,
T h e C o l l e c t e d W o r k s o f D a v i d L a v e r y 20
but
it
is
a
permanent
one,
and
now
that
it
has
evolved
in
us,
there
is
no
greatness
without
it.
Until
its
pangs
are
allayed,
the
sincerest
works
of
art
will
also
be
the
most
tortured
and
preoccupied,
sacrificing
spirit
to
idea
and
life
to
propaganda.
[.
.
.]
I
believe
that
for
the
future
we
have
to
face
either
a
world
without
these
things
or
a
world
in
which
the
leisure
and
refinement
which
alone
make
them
possible
are
not
drawn
in
dividends
from
half‐educated
millions
to
whom
all
chance
of
knowing
them,
or
even
the
value
of
them
is
denied.
One
of
two
things
is
true.
Civilisation
is
either
a
ghastly
accident,
or
it
is
a
means
to
the
end
of
freeing
the
human
spirit
in
this
world.
If
the
former—so;
but
if
the
latter,
there
can
be
nothing
more
than
a
fluttering
of
wings,
until
humanity
has
established
its
place
in
the
sun.
(159‐60)
We
recognize,
of
course,
Barfield’s
customary
eloquence;
but
we
are
not
immediately
familiar
with
the
social
consciousness
it
exhibits.
The
Barfield
of
Diener’s
study
is
a
young
intellectual
wrestling
not
with
original
and
final
participation,
polarity,
logomorphism,
chronological
snobbery,
the
Residue
of
Unresolved
Positivism
(RUP),
and
the
evolution
of
consciousness
but
with
economic
issues,
the
nature
of
consumption,
contemporary
manifestations
of
philosophical
dualism,
the
future
of
leisure,
Matthew
Arnold’s
concept
of
culture,
Lost
Generation
pessimism,
industrial
development,
advertising,
and
the
promise
of
technology.
Diener
illuminates
as
well
Barfield’s
indebtedness
to
three
of
his
great
influences,
establishing
new
links
between
Barfield’s
and
Samuel
Taylor
Coleridge’s
confrontations
with
dualistic
thought,
examining
Barfield
and
Lewis’s
encounter
with
the
contemporary
philosophical
climate,
and
delineating
important
similarities
in
Barfield
and
Rudolf
Steiner’s
struggle
to
surmount
the
widening
gap
between
idealism
and
practicality.
(Almost
in
passing,
Diener
establishes
convincing
internal
evidence
for
the
date
of
Barfield’s
much
disputed
first
exposure
to
Steiner
and
anthroposophy.)
By
no
means
uncritical—Diener
accuses
the
early
Barfield
of
a
tendency
toward
evasiveness—she
argues
that
Barfield’s
development
as
a
thinker
shows
him
aware
of
his
weaknesses
and
striving
to
go
beyond
them
in
his
later
work.
Barfieldians
spend
a
great
deal
of
their
energy
trying
to
account
for
the
astonishing
ignorance
of
his
achievement
among
those
who
should
appreciate
his
work.
Diener
faults
the
near
absence
of
Barfield
from
Humphrey
Carpenter’s
seminal
book
on
the
Inklings
as
a
contributing
factor,
but
the
real
cause
may
be
our
disregard
for
the
writings
her
study
seeks
to
foreground.
For
to
know
them
forces
us
to
rethink
Barfield’s
place
in
modern
thought
and,
in
addition,
that
of
his
mentor/collaborator
Rudolf
Steiner.
As
Diener
explains
in
the
book’s
closing
lines:
These
writings
reveal
T h e C o l l e c t e d W o r k s o f D a v i d L a v e r y 21
an
author
who,
in
contrast
to
many
of
his
more
pessimistic
contemporaries,
welcomed
change
and
technical
progress.
He
welcomed
them
as
positive
means
to
the
end
of
creating
those
conditions
which
would
make
the
experience
of
wholeness
and
participation
possible
in
modem
life.
For
this
reason,
despite
the
weakness
in
the
area
of
practical
detail
already
noted,
Barfield
ultimately
has
to
count
as
an
essentially
progressive
and
modem
thinker.
Unfortunately,
his
practical
reform
writings
have
so
far
been
completely
neglected
in
scholarship.
This
is
perhaps
not
surprising.
Indeed,
our
present
inability
to
appreciate
the
practical
reform
aspect
of
his
thought
may
itself
result
from
the
dualism
which
he
himself
had
hoped
to
overcome.
Such
partiality
has
had
serious
consequences,
and
not
just
for
Barfield’s
reputation:
“he
has
become
obscure
and
esoteric
and
has
lost
his
concrete
relevance
in
the
practical
world
of
our
daily
experience.
He
has
thus
suffered
a
similar
fate
to
that
of
Rudolf
Steiner—a
fate
which
neither
he
nor
his
predecessor
deserves”
(174).
The
notion
that
there
was
essentially
no
development
in
Barfield’s
long
career
is
not
the
only
truism
Diener’s
book
subverts.
It
has
long
been
assumed
that
all
the
interest
in
Owen
Barfield
was
North
American.
American
universities,
after
all,
inspired
Barfield’s
post‐retirement
resurgence;
most
prominent
Barfieldians,
from
G.
B.
Tennyson
to
Shirley
Sugerman,
Tom
Kranidas,
Howard
Nemerov,
and
Lionel
Adey,
were
from
the
United
States
or
Canada;
and
an
American
press
(Wesleyan)
kept
Barfield’s
work
in
print.
But
Diener’s
interest
in
Owen
Barfield
began
in
Freiburg—
where
Professor
Elmar
Schenkel,
who
edits
the
book
series
which
produced
The
Role
of
Imagination,
was
her
mentor—and
culminated
at
Oxford,
under
the
direction
of
Professor
A.
D.
Nuttall.
(Both
Schenkel
and
Nuttall
have
contributed
to
Diener’s
book,
writing
the
Afterword
and
Foreword,
respectively).
This
German
and
British
involvement
bodes
well
for
the
future
advancement
of
“Barfield
studies.”
If
such
is
to
come,
it
seems
indisputable
that
Astrid
Diener’s
book
will
be
seen
as
a
watershed
study.
Review Television
Histories:
Shaping
Collective
Memory
in
the
Media
Age.
Edited
by
Gary
R.
Edgerton
and
Peter
C.
Rollins
Lexington,
KY:
University
of
Kentucky
Press
The
television
spectrum
of
the
early
21st
century
is
wide
and
varied,
but
Tony
Soprano’s
favorite
destination
is
The
History
Channel.
As
the
fictional
New
Jersey
mob
boss
tells
his
daughter
during
a
discussion
of
his
brief
matriculation
at
Seton
Hall,
history
has
always
been
his
favorite
subject,
and
he
demonstrates
a
good
grasp
of
it
for
a
college
drop
out
in
the
waste
management
business.
When
an
Hasidic
Jew
Tony’s
gang
seeks
to
beat
into
submission
brags
that
“For
two
years,
900
Jews
held
their
own
against
15
thousand
Roman
soldiers,”
choosing
“death
before
enslavement”
and
asks
(he
thinks
rhetorically)
“And
the
Romans,
where
are
they
now?”,
The
History
Channel
fan
replies,
“You're
looking
at
them,
[bleep].”
In
Gary
R.
Edgerton
and
Peter
C.
Rollins’
valuable
new
collection
of
essays
on
television’s
treatment
of
history,
The
History
Channel,
not
surprisingly,
warrants
a
chapter
(Brian
Taves’
“The
History
Channel
and
the
Challenge
of
Historical
Programming”),
a
very
good
one,
in
fact,
offering
a
pioneering,
model
approach
to
assessment
of
an
entire
network
(television
criticism
customarily
dealing
with
programs
or
episodes
or
series).
But
it
offers
much
more
of
value
to
those
interested
in
understanding
rather
than
simply
condemning
TV’s
role
in
the
creation
of
“collective
memory.”
A
few
of
the
essays
in
Television
Histories
demonstrate
a
conscious,
preemptory
defensiveness
against
the
anticipated
complaint
of
the
“historian
cop”
(Robert
Sklar’s
phrase,
quoted
in
the
book)
that
television
history
isn’t
true
history,
but
all
seem
committed
to
a
future
“mediation
where
professional
history
must
ultimately
share
space
with
popular
history”
(Edgerton
in
the
“Introduction”).
Television
Histories
is
grounded
in
large
part
on
the
assumption—laid
out
by
Edgerton
in
his
Introduction—that
“television
is
the
principal
means
by
which
most
people
learn
about
history
today”
(1),
that
it
has
replaced
journalism
proper
as
the
“the
first
flawed
rough
drafts
of
history”
(the
title
of
a
very
perceptive
piece
by
Philip
M.
Taylor).
Its
sixteen
essays,
arranged
in
four
sections
(Prime‐Time
T h e C o l l e c t e d W o r k s o f D a v i d L a v e r y 23
Entertainment
Programming
as
Historian,
The
Television
Documentary
as
Historian,
News
and
Public
Affairs
Programming
as
Historian,
and
Television
Production,
Reception,
and
History),
present
an
ambitious
agenda.
Some
of
the
subjects
examined
seem
almost
obligatory
in
such
a
volume:
the
documentaries
of
Ken
Burns
(Edgerton’s
essay
focuses
on
Thomas
Jefferson
but
provides
an
excellent
introduction
to
Burns’
“emotional
archaeology”),
for
example,
or
television
coverage
of
the
fall
of
the
Berlin
Wall,
and
the
Victory
at
Sea
and
Profiles
in
Courage
documentaries.
But
many
inclusions
are
surprising
and
original.
Steve
Anderson’s
“History,
TV
and
Popular
Memory”
examines
You
Are
There,
Steve
Allen’s
unforgettable
Meeting
of
Minds,
Star
Trek,
and
the
completely
forgettable
Dark
Skies
as
exemplars
of
what
he
calls
“fantastic
historiography.”
Mimi
White’s
chapter
on
“Masculinity
and
Femininity
in
Television’s
Historical
Fictions:
Young
Indiana
Chronicles
and
Dr.
Quinn,
Medicine
Woman
offers
an
unusual
look
at
the
inventive
way
in
which
both
series
revisit
history.
Robert
Hanke’s
essay
on
Quantum
Leap,
perhaps
the
most
theoretically
sophisticated
(and
most
challenging)
in
the
book,
brings
Walter
Benjamin,
Foucault,
and
de
Certeau
to
bear
on
a
science
fiction
program
that
has
not
garnered
much
serious
attention.
And
Thomas
Doherty’s
“Pixies:
Homosexuality,
Anti‐Communism,
and
the
Army‐McCarthy
Hearing”
uses
a
single
word
uttered
by
attorney
Joseph
Welch
as
a
wormhole
through
which
to
enter
and
explore
the
mindset
of
the
McCarthy
era.
Although
most
of
the
essays
are
likely
to
be
of
considerable
value
to
any
attentive
student
of
television,
a
few
are
likely
to
be
too
specialized
and
academic
to
be
of
much
interest.
Chris
Vos’
“Breaking
the
Mirror:
Dutch
Television
and
the
History
of
the
Second
World
War,”
Carolyn
Anderson’s
“Contested
Public
Memories:
Hawaiian
History
as
Hawaiian
or
American
Experience,”
and
Netta
Ha‐Ilan’s
“Images
of
History
in
Israel
Television
News:
The
Territorial
Dimension
of
Collective
Memories,
1987‐
1990”
are
all
well
researched
and
well‐written
essays
and
valuable
contributions
to
comparative
television
studies
but
perhaps
too
esoteric
to
hold
the
attention
of
the
general
reader.
And
at
least
one
essay,
James
L.
Baughman’s
“Nice
Guys
Last
Fifteen
Seasons:
Jack
Benny
on
Television,
1950‐1965,”
though
informed
and
engaging,
does
not
seem
to
belong
at
all:
television
history
it
clearly
is,
but
even
on
second
reading
it
doesn’t
seem
to
mesh
with
the
overall
agenda
of
Television
Histories.
On
the
back
of
the
dust
cover
of
Television
Histories
we
find
the
following
blurb
(from
Michael
Schoenecke
of
Texas
Tech
University):
“A
pioneer
work
that
T h e C o l l e c t e d W o r k s o f D a v i d L a v e r y 24
weaves
an
inspired
and
informed
interdisciplinary
analysis
of
television
and
history.
The
chapters
are
enlightening,
readable,
and
entertaining;
the
editors
and
authors
have
produced
a
work
that
enriches
and
strengthens
the
study
of
film
and
history.”
This
assessment
seems
to
this
reviewer
accurate
and
fair
(though
I
might
question
the
accuracy
of
the
word
“entertaining”),
but
I
find
it
puzzling
that
Professor
Schoenecke
would
characterize
Television
Histories
as
a
contribution
to
“the
study
of
film
and
history.
This
is
a
book
about
television,
is
it
not?
As
Edgerton
recognizes
in
the
introduction
“it
goes
without
saying
that
television
has
only
recently
emerged
as
a
focus
of
serious
study
within
universities
and
colleges;
one
might
even
say
that
it
has
become
a
fashionable
subject
in
a
number
of
the
humanities
and
social
sciences.”
Not
fashionable
enough,
it
would
seem,
when
Schoenecke
cannot
distinguish
between
a
book
on
film
and
a
“serious
study”
of
television.
Review Inside
Prime
Time
by
Todd
Gitlin
University
of
California
Press
Teleliteracy:
Taking
Television
Seriously
by
David
Bianculli
Syracuse
University
Press
Many
serious
people
pride
themselves
on
a
contemptuous
ignorance
of
television
entertainment,
accompanied
by
a
sneaking
fascination
with
its
raw
cultural
power
and
a
horror
of
its
effects
on
public
sensibility.
At
least
half
the
time
I
have
been
one
of
these
people.
Todd
Gitlin,
"Prologue"
to
Inside
Prime
Time
I’m
arguing
that
television
should
be
taken
seriously
enough
to
be
judged
in
context,
without
preconceptions,
on
its
own
merits.
.
.
.
David
Bianculli,
Teleliteracy
In
Teleliteracy
David
Bianculli
quotes
Robert
J.
Thompson
on
the
subject
of
serious
books
on
television:
"Even
when
I
was
in
graduate
school
in
1981
.
.
.
there
was
only
half
a
shelf
on
the
stuff."
The
situation
has
changed,
of
course:
television
is
much
more
earnestly
studied
now.
The
several
shelves
that
now
exist
include
recent
republications
of
Bianculli's
1992
book
by
Syracuse
University
Press
(a
new
volume
in
The
Television
Series)
and
Todd
Gitlin's
classic
study
Inside
Prime
Time
(1983)
by
the
University
of
California
Press.
Except
for
a
new
introduction
by
Gitlin,
both
volumes
are
straight
reprintings,
and
yet
these
books
by
one
of
television's
best
working
critics
(Bianculli
now
writes
for
the
New
York
Daily
News)
and
one
of
its
harshest
academic
detractors
(Gitlin
now
teaches
at
New
York
University)
deserve
our
attention
as
exemplars
of
two
very
different
approaches
to
television
criticism.
In
his
introduction
Bianculli
quotes
Mark
Crispin
Miller
(now
Gitlin's
fellow
"professor
of
Media
Ecology"
at
NYU):
"Everybody
watches
[television],
but
no
one
really
likes
it.
.
.
.
Its
only
champions
are
its
own
executives,
the
advertisers
who
exploit
it,
and
a
compromised
network
of
academic
boosters.
Otherwise
TV
has
no
spontaneous
defenders,
because
there
is
almost
nothing
to
defend."
As
a
now
proud
member
of
the
"compromised
network
of
academic
boosters,"
I
should
declare
at
the
T h e C o l l e c t e d W o r k s o f D a v i d L a v e r y 28
outset
of
this
review
my
own
conflict
of
interest,
but
I
must
admit
too
that
I
am
a
recent
convert
to
boosterism
and
once
counted
both
Miller
and
Gitlin
among
my
major
influences
back
in
the
days
when
Miller's
Boxed
In:
The
Culture
of
Television
(1988),
Gitlin's
Inside
Prime
Time,
and
of
course
Jerry
Mander's
Four
Arguments
for
the
Elimination
of
Television
(1978)
were
key
planks
in
my
own
anti‐
television
platform.
Now
I
have
gone
over
to
the
other
culture
and
count
myself
as
a
defender
of
the
medium,
and
I
find
Bianculli's
book
much
more
appealing
and
relevant.
"There
is
no
way
around
television"
Gitlin
explains
in
his
new
introduction,
"there
are
only
ways
through
it."
It
was
in
the
pages
of
Gitlin's
heads‐on
encounter
with
the
medium
that
this
trained‐as‐an‐
English‐professor‐critic
first
became
conversant,
almost
two
decades
ago,
with
such
concepts
as
counter
programming,
least
objectionable
programming,
spinoffs,
recombinant
television,
syndication,
and
Gitlin’s
analysis
of
these
and
other
television
vectors
remains
illuminating
and
relevant.
In
Gitlin's,
neo‐Marxist,
cerebral
(in
its
pages
we
encounter
not
only
Norman
Lear
and
Grant
Tinker
and
Fred
Silverman
but
Theodore
Adorno
and
Alexis
de
Tocqueville)
critique
what
is
lacking
is
any
sympathetic
understanding
of
the
process
of
television
creation
at
the
level
of
the
individual
program.
(What
Bianculli
says
of
Miller—that
he
“seems
incapable
of
accepting
the
fact
that
many
of
the
people
who
make
television,
like
many
who
watch
it
actually
have
an
affection
for
it”—would
appear
to
apply
equally
well
to
Gitlin.)
Except
for
a
very
good
chapter
on
Hill
Street
Blues,
Inside
Prime
Time
is
devoted
almost
entirely
to
"thick
description"
(anthropologist
Clifford
Geertz's
term)
of
the
decision
making
process
of
the
movers
and
shakers/beggars
and
choosers
of
television
at
the
network
level.
Given
unprecedented
access
to
the
men
and
women
behind
the
curtain
as
he
researched
Inside
in
the
early
eighties,
Gitlin
in
the
end
is
able
to
ask
large
questions
(“the
question
of
whether
there
would
be
an
American
culture
without
[TV]”),
make
startling
observations
("the
genius
of
consumer
society
is
its
ability
to
convert
the
desire
for
change
into
a
desire
for
novel
goods"),
and
offer
rather
opaque
formulae
(television
is
“meaninglessness
raised
to
a
universal
principle”;
“the
deal
is
the
art
form”;
“Off
the
screen
as
on
it,
slick
and
quick
get
the
job
done”).
At
the
end
of
his
new
introduction,
Gitlin
insists
that
he
wished
his
"book
.
.
.
were
strictly
of
historical
interest"
but
concludes
that
it
"is,
alas,
in
my
judgment,
as
germane
today
as
when
it
was
first
published."
He
is
partly
right:
much
of
it
is
still
T h e C o l l e c t e d W o r k s o f D a v i d L a v e r y 29
pertinent.
But
the
reader
may
find
it
hard
to
agree
that
a
book
only
barely
cognizant
of
the
rise
of
niche
programming
and
of
the
expansion
of
the
cable
spectrum,
that
laments
to
a
new
millennium
able
to
acquire
home
dolby
sound
systems,
the
awfulness
of
television
sound,
that
devotes
a
good
part
of
a
chapter
to
Today’s
FBI
(1981‐82)
but
knows
nothing
of
The
X‐Files,
is
timely
as
well
as
germane.
Until
and
unless
Gitlin
rewrites
inside
Prime
Time
for
the
new
millennium
or
authors
Inside
Prime
Time:
The
Sequel,
his
book
is
likely
to
be
primarily
of
historical
interest.
When
we
find
him
in
his
new
intro
observing,
with
his
usual
conceptual
brilliance,
that
the
networks
are
now
“wildly
spinning
off
cable
networks
and
Internet
auxiliaries
in
the
manner
of
hit
series
that
used
to
spawn
new
programs
for
secondary
characters,”
we
are
left
longing
for
at
least
a
remake,
an
inspection
of
our
prime
time,
not
the
Reagan
era’s.
In
Teleliteracy
David
Bianculli
characterizes
the
anti‐television
stance
of
Mark
Crispin
Miller
quoted
above
as
the
sort
of
pose
we
can
expect
from
"someone
who
writes
about
TV
a
lot
more
than
he
watches
it—or,
at
least,
of
someone
who
watches
all
the
wrong
things."
Careful
to
insist
that
he
is
not
himself
"soft
on
television"
(should
there
be
any
doubt
of
his
politics,
the
interested
voter
need
only
examine
his
twenty
year
voting
record
as
a
practicing
critic),
Bianculli's
book
seeks
to
expose
the
origin
and
nature
of
television
prejudice,
a
form
of
bigotry
still
acceptable
in
even
the
best
intellectual
circles.
"Where
else,"
he
asks,
"but
in
the
land
of
TV
criticism
are
prejudice
and
ignorance
considered
assets?"
"Almost
alone
among
the
major
critical
disciplines,”
he
complains,
“television
criticism
fosters—
and
often
encourages—an
overt
antagonism
toward
the
medium
being
analyzed.
A
film
critic
displaying
constant
contempt
for
that
medium
would
soon
be
replaced;
a
TV
critic
with
the
same
attitude
would
likely
be
promoted."
Asking
for
a
"change
of
venue"
for
television's
trial,
he
then
sets
out
to
provide
it:
his
book,
with
its
large
historical
canvas,
is
the
new
court
he
seeks.
In
a
readable,
well‐researched,
pun‐filled
(perhaps
too
pun‐filled)
300+
pages,
Bianculli
not
only
offers
us
a
great
deal
of
television
history
("if
we
do
not
learn
from
our
TV
history,"
he
reminds
us,
recasting
Santayana's
famous
dictum,
"we
are
condemned
to
repeats")
and
an
admirable
chronicle
of
high
culture
disdain
for
new
media
from
Plato
to
Newton
Minnow
to
Miller,
he
makes
a
strong
case
for
why
television
deserves
more
respect.
Marshalling
support
from
a
host
of
FOTs
(friends
of
television),
including
Dennis
Potter,
Thompson,
James
L.
Brooks,
William
Link,
Linda
T h e C o l l e c t e d W o r k s o f D a v i d L a v e r y 30
Ellerbee,
Shelley
Duvall,
and
Kurt
Vonnegut,
Bianculli
concludes
that
"Only
idiots
continue
to
think
of
it
as
an
idiot
box."
Like
Inside
Prime
Time,
the
book
is
to
a
degree
dated.
The
John
Milton
to
Milton
Berle
"teleliteracy
pretest,"
for
example,
though
witty
and
comprehensive,
would
benefit
from
more
attention
to
the
1990s.
Indeed
the
whole
book
seems
to
some
degree
a
product
of
the
Gulf
War
era.
Some
of
the
foes
of
television
he
sets
out
to
challenge—
Thomas
Radecki
and
The
National
Coalition
on
Television
Violence,
George
Gerbner's
reductionism—seem
no
longer
worthy
of
opposition,
even
if
their
successors
no
doubt
are.
Film
rose
to
prominence
and
attained
serious
consideration
as
an
art
form,
Bianculli
suggests,
because
TV
"absorbed
most
of
the
cultural
flak."
The
era
of
TV
the
flak
catcher
is,
Teleliteracy
argues
convincingly,
may
and
should
be
over.
Review Buffy
the
Vampire
Slayer:
The
Monster
Book
Christopher
Golden,
Stephen
R.
Bissette,
and
Thomas
E.
Sniegoski
New
York:
Pocket
Books
Buffy
the
Vampire
Slayer:
The
Watcher’s
Guide.
Vol.
2
Nancy
Holder,
with
Jeff
Mariotte
and
Maryelizabeth
Hart
Pocket
Books
The
Sopranos:
A
Family
History
Allen
Rucker
New
American
Library
Over
a
decade
ago,
John
Fiske
reminded
us
(in
Television
Culture)
that
TV
series
are
“activated
texts,”
generating
much
more
than
the
individual
episodes
that
constitute
a
series’
actual
on‐air
presence.
Both
secondary
(criticism,
publicity)
and
tertiary
(discussion
and
commentary
occurring
at
the
fan
level)
texts
follow
in
the
wake
of
most
TV
shows,
and
the
meaning
and
significance
both
kinds
of
texts
generate
are
plowed
back
into
the
primary
texts
themselves,
becoming
part
of
how
viewers
“read”
them.
That
Entertainment
Weekly
guide
to
Seinfeld
deepened
our
appreciation
of
a
show
about
nothing.
That
fanfiction
we
discovered
on
the
internet,
the
one
that
imagines
Kirk
and
Spock
as
lovers,
lead
us
to
see
Star
Trek
in
a
radical
new
light.
That
book
of
“fantasy
blueprints
of
classic
TV
homes”
(Mark
Bennett’s
Television
Sets)
enhanced
our
grasp
of
the
“textual
geography”
of
The
Clampett
mansion
or
Gilligan’s
island.
Contemporary
television
has
likewise
spun‐off
a
wide
variety
of
“commodity
intertexts”
(James
Collins’
coinage),
secondary
texts,
both
official
and
unofficial,
fiction
and
non‐fiction,
to
satisfy
the
often
cultic
needs
of
television
fans
to
know
more—much
more—and
imagine
more
about
their
favorite
programs.
A
decade
ago,
T h e C o l l e c t e d W o r k s o f D a v i d L a v e r y 32
Twin
Peaks
produced
not
only
The
Secret
Diary
of
Laura
Palmer
but
The
Autobiography
of
F.B.I.
Special
Agent
Dale
Cooper:
My
Life,
My
Tapes,
and
Welcome
to
Twin
Peaks:
Access
Guide
to
the
Town—all
official
Twin
Peaks
books.
Over
the
last
decade
The
X‐Files
industry
has
generated
annual
official
guides
to
Chris
Carter’s
series,
now
in
its
8th
season.
Buffy
the
Vampire
Slayer
has
inspired
over
a
dozen
popular
paperbacks
for
those
viewers,
mostly
teens,
who
can’t
get
enough
of
Sunnydale
and
its
heroes
and
villains.
Two
of
current
television’s
best
shows,
Joss
Whedon’s
Buffy,
now
in
its
fifth
season
on
the
WB
netlet,
and
David
Chase’s
The
Sopranos,
about
to
begin
its
third
on
HBO—both
genuine
cultural
phenomena,
part
of
what
we
talk
about
even
for
those
who
do
not
watch—have
also
recently
produced
official
companions:
for
Buffy,
a
comprehensive
examination
of
the
series’
many
monsters
and
a
second
“watcher’s
guide”
covering
seasons
three
and
four
(an
earlier
volume,
written
by
Golden
and
Holder,
had
appeared
in
1998)
and
for
The
Sopranos,
a
family
history.
From
the
beginning,
Buffy
the
Vampire
Slayer
(hereafter
BtVS),
a
series
which
this
season
will
produce
its
100th
episode,
has
been
one
of
the
most
underrated
on
all
of
television
(this
year’s
Viewers
for
Quality
Television
Founder’s
Award
a
recent
exception).
Indeed,
as
Richard
Campbell
acknowledges
elsewhere
in
this
issue,
announcing
unashamedly
that
one
simply
watches
BtVS
elicits
“blank
and
open‐
mouthed
stares”
in
some
circles—especially
among
academics.
And
yet
it
has
always
been
the
most
bookish
show
on
television,
one
in
which
books
and
research
have
figured
prominently.
BtVS’
primal
scene,
at
least
for
the
first
three
years,
is
Buffy
and
the
Scooby
Gang—her
friends
Xander
Harris
and
Willow
Rosenberg
and
her
Watcher,
librarian
Rupert
Giles—gathering
in
the
Sunnydale
High
School
library,
researching
the
monster
they
are
about
to
fight,
acquiring
the
knowledge
which
is
their
power.
Rupert
Giles
(Anthony
Stewart
Head),
according
to
reports,
has
done
for
librarians
what
Indiana
Jones
(Harrison
Ford)
did
for
archaeologists.
It
seems
only
fitting
then
that
BtVS’s
arcana
should
find
its
way
into
book
form.
BtVS
is
a
series
with
a
complex
and
ever‐evolving
mythology,
explained
in
germ
by
Giles
in
the
second
part
of
its
pilot
episode:
This
world
is
older
than
any
of
you
know.
Contrary
to
popular
mythology,
it
did
not
begin
as
a
paradise.
For
untold
eons
demons
walked
the
Earth.
They
made
it
their
home,
their.
.
.
their
Hell.
But
in
time
they
lost
their
purchase
on
this
T h e C o l l e c t e d W o r k s o f D a v i d L a v e r y 33
reality.
The
way
was
made
for
mortal
animals,
for,
for
man.
All
that
remains
of
the
old
ones
are
vestiges,
certain
magicks,
certain
creatures...
The
books
tell
us
the
last
demon
to
leave
this
reality
fed
off
a
human,
mixed
their
blood.
He
was
a
human
form
possessed,
infected
by
the
demon's
soul.
He
bit
another,
and
another,
and
so
they
walk
the
Earth,
feeding
.
.
.
killing
some,
mixing
their
blood
with
others
to
make
more
of
their
kind.
Waiting
for
the
animals
to
die
out,
and
the
old
ones
to
return.
BtVS
does
not
limit
itself
to
these
demons,
of
course.
As
Giles
likewise
explains:
Now,
I
believe
this
whole
area
is
a
center
of
mystical
energy,
that
things
gravitate
towards
it
that,
that,
that
you
might
not
find
elsewhere.
.
.
.
Like
zombies,
werewolves,
incubi,
succubi,
.
.
.
everything
you've
ever
dreaded
was
under
your
bed,
but
told
yourself
couldn't
be
by
the
light
of
day.
They're
all
real!
The
first
Watcher’s
Guide
had
offered
a
brief
“Monster
Guide,”
but
the
monsters
have
continued
non‐stop
for
the
last
two
years
and
earned
their
own
separate
volume.
Divided
into
sections
on
Demons,
Vampires,
Magic
Users,
Primals,
Ghosts,
The
Walking
Dead,
Bogeyman,
Invisible
People,
Faith
[a
fellow
slayer
who
succumbs
to
the
Dark
Side]
and
the
Human
Monster,
The
Monster
Book
not
only
offers
encyclopedia‐style
entries
on
each
specific
monster
the
series
has
disgorged,
including
basic
information
(key
relationships,
unique
attributes,
most
monstrous
moments,
current
status),
relevant
quotations,
and,
of
course,
a
black
and
white
photo,
but
includes
as
well
comprehensive
essays
on
the
background
mythology,
both
inside
and
outside
BtVS,
of
each
type.
The
insightful
essay
on
vampires,
for
example,
is
thirteen
pages
in
length.
The
second
volume
of
The
Watcher’s
Guide
presents
an
all‐inclusive
guide
to
what
BtVS’s
creators
and
fans
now
call
the
“Buffyverse.”
We
are
given
comprehensive
character
and
episode
guides,
cast
profiles,
a
listing
of
all
the
(largely
unknown)
bands
whose
music
has
been
featured
on
Buffy,
and
a
largely
self‐serving
guide
to
BtVS
merchandise.
The
Guide
is
at
its
best
tracking
continuity
(as
it
does
in
each
entry
of
the
episode
guide),
for
BtVS
is
a
show
with
an
extraordinary
memory
which
puts
great
demands
on
the
narratological
skills
of
viewers
(a
joke
in
episode
T h e C o l l e c t e d W o r k s o f D a v i d L a v e r y 34
79,
the
last
episode
of
Season
Four,
required
viewers
to
recall
a
dress
Willow
wore
in
episode
1),
and
such
help
is
most
welcome,
although
such
guidance
is
already
available
on
the
web
(at
such
unauthorized,
superb
free
sites
as
Buffy
Guide.com
(http://www.buffyguide.com/)
and
Buffy
World
(http://www.buffyworld.com/index.htm).
The
one
completely
unique
section
of
the
Guide
is
“Creating
Buffy:
The
Production
Process,”
which,
through
interviews
and
commentary
focusing
on
the
creation
of
the
4th
Season
episode
“The
I
in
Team,”
takes
us
deep
behind
the
scenes
of
the
ever‐amazing
process
of
TV
creation.
It
is
must‐reading
for
anyone
hopeful
of
unraveling
the
continuing
mystery
of
how
quality
television
happens
in
spite
of
the
time
and
money
constraints
of
the
medium.
These
two
BtVS
companions,
though
useful
and
comprehensive
and
well
done,
pale
by
comparison
as
books
with
the
brilliantly
conceived
and
beautifully
designed
(by
Dan
Newman)
The
Sopranos:
A
Family
History.
Purporting
to
be
the
by‐product
of
author
Allen
Rucker’s
assignment
to
organize
a
massive
archive
on
the
Sopranos
family
assembled
by
an
expert
on
organized
crime
named
Jeffrey
Warwick,
this
coffee‐table
book
presents
itself
as
“little
more
than
journalistic
housecleaning”
compared
to
“Warwick’s
Herculean
efforts.”
At
the
outset
we
find
a
list
of
contributors:
a
group
that
includes
all
the
people
Warwick
and
Rucker
supposedly
spoke
to,
from
ex‐gangsters
now
in
the
witness
protection
program
to
Tony
Soprano’s
favorite
teacher,
to
Livid
Sopranos’
briefly
employed
geriatric
caregiver.
Jeffrey
Warwick,
of
course,
is
actually
a
character
on
The
Sopranos
(as
are
many
of
the
other
contributors),
appearing
on
television
in
an
episode
like
“The
Legend
of
Tennessee
Moltisanti”
(Season
One,
Episode
8),
sharing
his
knowledge
of
the
New
Jersey
mob
with
local
media.
One
day,
we
are
told,
Wernick
will
tell
all,
but
“the
Sopranos
story
is
a
long
way
from
over”
(aka
the
series
is
still
ongoing),
and
in
the
meantime
we
will
have
to
make
due
with
his
assistant’s
pastiche
assemblage
of
Sopraniana.
False
modesty
is
part
of
Rucker’s
fiction
of
course.
The
book
offers
all
the
givens
of
a
TV
companion
volume:
an
interview
with
series
creator
David
Chase
(who,
the
official
Sopranos
website
tells
us,
“was
instrumental
in
developing
the
look
and
content
of
the
book”),
profiles
of
each
of
the
major
players,
and
an
authoritative
episode
summary,1
but
it
is
hard
to
imagine
a
book
of
its
kind
any
more
original
than
this.
I
did
find
three
errors
in
the
episode
guide.
We
are
told
that,
after
the
Junior‐
ordered,
unsuccessful
hit
(in
“Isabella”),
Tony
crashes
“his
Suburban
into
a
tree,”
T h e C o l l e c t e d W o r k s o f D a v i d L a v e r y 35
when
in
fact
he
smashes
into
some
parked
cars.
In
“Guy
Walks
into
a
Psychiatrist’s
Office,”
Philly
Parisi
“runs
into
Gigi
Cestone
(working
for
Tony)
at
the
airport.
In
fact
Parisi
had
unwittingly
gone
to
the
airport
to
pick
his
killer
up.
And
Sandra
Bernhard’s
name
(she
appears
in
“D‐Girl”)
is
spelled
wrong
(Bernhardt).
Picky,
picky?
Perhaps,
but
this
is,
after
all,
the
“official”
companion.
("As
the
Bible
is
to
Western
thought,”
David
Chase
proclaims
on
the
website,
“so
is
The
Sopranos:
A
Family
History
to
the
field
of
companion
books”!)
In
ten
chapters—The
Sopranos,
A
Soprano
Family
History,
Tony’s
Children,
The
Soprano
Crime
Family,
Life
with
Livia,
Tony
and
Carmela,
Tony
on
the
Couch,
The
Business,
Growing
Up
Soprano,
and
The
Future—Rucker
presents
us
with
deep
background
on
the
series
in
a
variety
of
forms.
We
are
privy
to
FBI
e‐mails
detailing
what
is
known
about
both
of
Tony
Soprano’s
families;
insights
into
New
Jersey’s
immigrant
population
from
a
Newark
Public
Library
expert;
family
photos
(some
from
the
old
world);
the
crudely‐conceived
family
trees
of
AJ
(Anthony
Soprano,
Junior);
FBI
surveillance
transcripts;
probation
reports;
a
1975
letter
on
Tony
Soprano’s
behalf
by
an
English
teacher
seeking
to
prevent
him
from
being
expelled;
a
college
letter
from
Tony
to
Carmela;
Johnny
Boy
Soprano’s
arrest
record;
a
page
from
Christopher
Moltisanti’s
awful
unfinished
screenplay,
“You
Bark,
I
Bite”;
confidential
reports
on
Livia
Soprano
(including
complaints
filed
by
fellow
residents)
from
the
Green
Grove
Retirement
Home;
a
letter
from
Carmela
to
her
interior
decorator
declining
an
offer
to
have
her
home
featured
in
“New
Jersey
Today;”
a
list
of
materials
found
in
the
Sopranos’
trash;
Carmela’s
ten
favorite
movies
(from
a
contest
at
her
video
store);
an
“abridged
dictionary
of
Northeastern
regional
mob
patois”;
a
diagram
of
the
Sopranos’
cashflow;
a
“body
count”
roster
of
those
who
have
(allegedly)
died
at
the
hands
of
the
Sopranos;
transcripts
of
Meadow
Sopranos’
visits
to
an
online
chatroom;
Meadow’s
Discover
Card
bill;
Joan
O’Connell
Scrivo’s
equivocal
letter
of
recommendation
for
Meadow
to
Georgetown
(written
as
a
result
of
Carmela’s
mob‐mom
encouragement)—and
this
is
only
a
partial
list.
The
result
of
this
polyphony
of
voices
is
a
simulated
oral
history
in
which
the
series’
already
rich,
multi‐dimensional
characters
and
its
meticulously
genuine
milieu
are
realized
even
further.
There
is
so
much
even
a
faithful
watcher
of
the
series
would
never
have
known:
that
Tony
hates
Bruce
Springsteen
(because
the
music
of
his
fellow
Jerseyite
is
too
depressing),
that
Livia’s
father
was
a
Eugene
Debs
style
socialist,
that
Tony
subscribes
to
Waste
News,
that
Livia
had
an
annoying
neighborhood
dog
whacked,
that
the
yearly
income
of
Paulie
Walnuts
is
between
T h e C o l l e c t e d W o r k s o f D a v i d L a v e r y 36
$60,000
and
$100,000
a
year;
that
at
Seton
Hall
Tony
hired
another
student
to
write
his
English
paper
for
him
(“Symbolism
in
Cat
on
a
Hot
Tin
Roof”—it
received
a
B+);
that
Janice
Soprano’s
estranged
son
Harpo
may
have
changed
his
named
to
Hal
after
being
beaten
up
on
the
playground
.
.
.
In
a
classic
essay
on
cult
movies
and
“intertextual
collage,”
Umberto
Eco
observes
that
one
given
of
The
Cult
is
its
ability
to
"provide
a
completely
furnished
world
so
that
its
fans
can
quote
characters
and
episodes
as
if
they
were
aspects
of
the
fan's
private
sectarian
world,
a
world
about
which
one
can
make
up
quizzes
and
play
trivia
games
so
that
the
adepts
of
the
secret
recognize
through
each
other
a
shared
experience"
(Travels
in
Hyperreality
198).
These
three
books,
inspired
by
commercial
motives
but
each
in
its
own
way
if
not
a
“holy”
text
at
least
an
essential
Baedeker,
will
appeal
most
to
cult
followers
of
Buffy
and
The
Sopranos—to
those
always
ready,
despite
the
dangers,
to
drop
in,
at
the
next
possible
opportunity,
to
Sunnydale
and/or
Northern
New
Jersey,
great
places
to
visit,
via
the
imagination,
if
not
to
live.
Review TV
Creators:
Conversations
with
America’s
Top
Producers
of
Television
Drama,
Volume
2
James
L.
Longworth,
Jr.
Syracuse:
Syracuse
University
Press,
2002
The
first
volume
of
James
L.
Longworth’s
interviews
with
TV
drama
creators
appeared
in
2000
and
included
colloquies
with
such
VIPs
of
the
medium
as
Dick
Wolf,
David
Chase,
Tom
Fontana,
John
Wells,
Nancy
Miller,
Ed
Zwick,
and
Steven
Bochco.
In
Volume
2
of
TV
Creators,
a
new
publication
in
The
Television
Series
from
Syracuse
University
Press,
Longworth
dialogues
with
twelve
more
significant
producers/creators,
patriarchs
like
Roy
Huggins
(the
original
The
Fugitive)
and
Aaron
Spelling
(Charlie’s
Angels,
Dynasty),
multiple
series
veterans
like
Glen
Gordon
Caron
(Moonlighting,
Now
and
Again),
Don
Bellisario
(Magnum
P.I.,
JAG),
Paul
Haggis
(The
Facts
of
Life,
Family
Law),
Clifton
Campbell
(21
Jump
Street,
Profiler),
Barbara
Hall
(I’ll
Fly
Away,
Judging
Amy),
and
emerging
figures
like
Martha
Williamson
(Touched
by
an
Angel),
Aaron
Sorkin
(West
Wing),
Anthony
Zuiker
(CSI:
Crime
Scene
Investigation),
Joss
Whedon
(Buffy
the
Vampire
Slayer),
John
McNamara
(the
second
incarnation
of
The
Fugitive).
Longworth’s
interviewing
style
is
likely
to
annoy
some.
He
is
not
one
of
those
who
asks
pertinent
questions
and
then
stays
out
of
the
way
(think
for
example
of
the
almost‐devoid‐of‐self‐reference
approach
of
a
Terry
Gross
on
National
Public
Radio’s
Fresh
Air),
nor
is
he
is
a
Barbara
Walters:
none
of
his
interviewees
is
brought
to
tears
(though
they
laugh
constantly).
Often
garrulous,
sometimes
offensive
(he
actually
asks
Caron
if
he
went
to
college
to
“get
laid”),
not
terribly
systematic
(the
free‐
wheeling
subject
matter
of
the
interviews
often
appears
devoid
of
a
logical
order),
sometimes
manipulative,
inclined
at
times
to
monopolize
the
conversation,
prone
to
engage
in
silly
banter
the
reader
may
wish
had
been
edited
out
(the
Spelling
interview,
for
example,
contains
pages
of
yada,
yada,
yada
chitchat
about
the
subject’s
failed
career
as
an
actor
and
the
interviewer’s
horses),
Longworth
comes
across
as
a
bit
full
of
himself.
But
the
self
he
is
full
of
exhibits
remarkable
knowledge
about
the
industry,
T h e C o l l e c t e d W o r k s o f D a v i d L a v e r y 38
demonstrates
a
firm
and
sympathetic
grasp
of
each
subject’s
life
and
career,
and
succeeds
again
and
again
in
soliciting
remarkable
insights.
Who
knew
that
Roy
Huggins
was
once
a
communist
and
that
the
original
Fugitive
was
seen
as
virulently
anti‐American?
That
Aaron
Spelling
considers
himself
an
innovator
in
the
portrayal
of
gender
and
sexual
preference
on
television?
That
“God
genre”
founder
Williamson
is
a
tremendous
admirer
of
HBO’s
Oz
and
admits
that,
given
the
assignment
to
helm
a
profane
and
controversial
prison
drama
on
cable
instead
of
Touched
by
an
Angel,
would
produce
a
very
similar
show?
That,
as
Whedon
admits,
one
of
the
ironic
side‐
effects
of
always‐obsessive
entanglement
in
the
generation
of
a
season
of
television
is
that
there
is
never
any
time
to
actually
watch
television?
That
Caron,
discussing
his
legendary
clashes
with
Cybill
Shepard,
could
admit
“I
may
in
fact
be
a
chauvinist
and
not
know
it.”
That
Anthony
Zuicker,
creator
of
CSI,
one
of
the
biggest
hits
of
the
last
two
seasons,
would
exhibit
a
refreshing
sense
of
humility
borne
of
his
awareness
of
the
place
of
a
newcomer
in
television’s
hierarchy:
What
people
don’t
understand
is
that
when
you
write
the
first
television
script
of
your
life
and
it
becomes
the
highest‐rated
drama
in
the
country
and
up
for
Golden
Globes,
it
doesn’t
mean
that
you’re
calling
all
the
shots.
You
have
to
find
your
position
and
work
as
a
team,
because
it’s
such
a
team
effort
from
top
to
bottom.
I
know
David
Kelley
and
Chris
Carter
and
those
guys
write
their
own
episodes
and
call
the
shots,
but
those
guys
have
earned
the
right
to
do
that.
They’ve
been
in
the
business
ten,
fifteen,
twenty
years.
I’ve
been
in
the
business
for
a
year.
It
is
generally
acknowledged
that
writers
have
more
status
in
television
than
in
the
movies,
and
not
surprisingly
these
interviews
with
individuals
most
of
whom
are
producers
and
writers
are
at
their
best
when
they
concern
authorship.
Almost
every
one
of
Longworth’s
subjects
sheds
light
on
the
difficulties
and
rewards
of
writing
for
TV.
Perhaps
the
most
memorable
exchange
comes
in
his
interview
with
Joss
Whedon:
LONGWORTH:
Has
writing
become
a
chore
for
you,
or
is
it
still
fun?
WHEDON:
It
is
the
most
fun
I'm
ever
going
to
have.
I
love
to
write.
I
love
it.
I
mean,
there's
nothing
in
the
world
I
like
better,
and
that
includes
sex,
probably
because
I'm
so
very
bad
at
it.
(Both
laugh.)
It's
the
greatest
peace.
When
I'm
in
a
scene,
and
it's
just
me
and
the
character,
that's
it,
that's
where
I
want
to
live
my
life.
I've
heard
about
guys
who
find
it
strenuous
and
painful
and
horrible,
and
I
scratch
my
noggin.
I
don't
get
it.
I
definitely
get
tired
of
T h e C o l l e c t e d W o r k s o f D a v i d L a v e r y 39
rewriting,
something
that
I'm
not
creating
from
whole
cloth
is
tough.
So
every
now
and
then
I
have
to
drum
up
the
enthusiasm
to
write
this
exposition
scene.
It's
a
real
drag.
But,
ultimately,
the
moment
I
break
into
a
scene,
the
moment
I
figure
out
what
it
is,
I'm
there,
I'm
loving
it.
Longworth’s
interview
with
Whedon
may
well
be
the
best
in
the
book,
and
it
is
certainly
the
most
intriguing
discussion
yet
with
the
mastermind
behind
Buffy
and
Angel.
Longworth’s
own
prose,
which
includes
sometimes
lengthy
set‐ups
for
each
conversation,
an
introduction
(“Television
and
Society
in
the
Twenty‐First
Century”)
surveying
phenomena
from
reality
television
to
vertical
integration,
government
intervention,
and
technological
developments,
and
a
concluding
chapter
offering
a
brief
but
comprehensive
examination
of
9/11’s
ramifications
on
television
drama,
exhibits
some
of
the
same
qualities
as
his
interviewing
style.
We
learn
a
great
deal
about
the
state
of
television
art,
but
we
must
put
up
as
well
with
such
florid
prose
as
this
forced
segue:
History
is
replete
with
explorers.
Men
and
women
who
thought
outside
of
the
box.
Pioneers
whose
vision
opened
up
new
paths
for
us
to
follow
and
enjoy.
One
famous
explorer
said
of
his
exploits,
“I
always
think
disaster
is
an
inch
away.”
That
explorer
is
Glen
Gordon
Caron,
and,
on
many
occasions,
he
has
ventured
into
uncharted
territory
so
that
television
could
be
a
better
place
for
us
to
settle
in.
That
television
is
a
producer’s
medium
has
been
received
wisdom
for
decades.
Rarely
do
we
know,
rarely
do
we
care,
who
wrote
or
directed
a
particular
television
episode,
even
of
our
favorite
series,
though
the
attentive
might
know
a
particular
show
is
the
product
of
a
Bochco
or
a
Wolf
or
a
Grant
Tinker
or
a
Norman
Lear.
Longworth’s
interviews
with
producers
does
not
expressly
challenge
this
assumption,
nor
is
it
likely
that
television
criticism
will
go
through
the
kind
of
auteur
phase
the
movies
experienced,
but
they
do
contribute
mightily
toward
our
growing
understanding
of
the
complications
of
television
creativity.
There
is
so
much
we
do
not
know
about
the
roles
of
motivation,
inspiration,
influence,
collaboration,
failure
(almost
every
one
of
the
book’s
subjects
speaks
sadly
about
the
experience
of
cancellation)
in
the
medium’s
imagination.
Longworth’s
books
(presumably
there
will
T h e C o l l e c t e d W o r k s o f D a v i d L a v e r y 40
be
at
least
a
third
volume)
provide
us
with
substantial
oral
history
helping
us
to
comprehend
these
dynamics.
Review Essay
William
Irwin
Thompson.
The
American
Replacement
of
Nature:
The
Everyday
Acts
and
Outrageous
Evolution
of
Economic
Life.
New
York:
Doubleday,
1992,
155
pgs.
Bill
McKibben.
The
Age
of
Missing
Information.
New
York:
Random
House,
1992,
252
pgs.
In
Don
DeLillo's
White
Noise,
the
small
Midwestern
town
where
Hitler
Studies
professor
Jack
Gladney
teaches
at
the
College
on
the
hill
is
threatened
by
an
"airborne
toxic
event"
spread
by
a
nearby
chemical
factory.
Soon
after
the
accident,
Gladney
speaks
with
a
technician
from
SIMUVAC,
a
member
of
a
"simulated
evacuation"
task
force
delegated
to
the
creation
of
a
working
model
of
"events"
like
the
one
that
has
just
taken
place.
"But
this
evacuation
isn't
simulated,"
Gladney
observes.
"It's
real."
"We
know
that,"
the
technician
acknowledges.
"But
we
thought
we
could
use
it
as
a
model."
Asked,
then,
how
the
actual
event
is
going,
he
replies:
The
insertion
curve
isn't
as
smooth
as
we
would
like.
There's
a
probability
excess.
Plus
which
we
don't
have
our
victims
laid
out
where
we'd
want
them
if
this
was
an
actual
simulation.
In
other
words
we're
forced
to
take
our
victims
where
we
find
them.
.
.
.
You
have
to
make
allowances
for
the
fact
that
everything
we
see
tonight
is
real.
There's
a
lot
of
polishing
we
still
have
to
do.
.
.
.
In
its
historical
subversion
of
the
distinction
between
real
and
simulated,
America,
like
DeLillo's
technician,
is
still
willing
to
make
allowances
for
the
real,
but
the
polishing
nevertheless
progresses
apace.
William
Irwin
Thompson's
The
American
T h e C o l l e c t e d W o r k s o f D a v i d L a v e r y 42
Replacement
of
Nature
and
Bill
McKibben's
The
Age
of
Missing
Information
should
be
read
as
progress
reports.
Formerly
a
member
of
the
faculty
at
the
Massachusetts
Institute
of
Technology,
and
founder
of
The
Lindisfarne
Association,
a
counter‐culture
think
tank
dedicated
toward
synthesizing
and
preserving
esoteric
knowledge
beyond
the
turning
of
another
Yeatsian
gyre
and
disseminating
it
to
a
coming
New
Age,
Thompson
is
the
author
of
such
earlier
books
on
cultural
history
and
futurism
as
The
Imagination
of
an
Insurrection
(1967),
The
Edge
of
History
(1971),
Passages
About
Earth
(1974),
Darkness
and
Scattered
Light
(1978),
The
Time
Falling
Bodies
Take
to
Light
(1981),
and
Imaginary
Landscape
(1989).
Now
a
resident
of
Switzerland,
Thompson
writes
about
American
culture,
in
the
tradition
of
Henry
James
and
T.
S.
Eliot,
as
seen
from
a
European
perspective,
as
an
expatriate
(he
praises
his
new
country's
efficiency).
But
he
is
careful
to
distinguish
himself
from
postmodern
Eurocentric
travel
writers
like
Jean
Baudrillard
and
Umberto
Eco
who
have
taken
the
United
States
as
their
subject:
"fascinated
by
America's
hyperreality,"
Thompson
observes,
"they
always
try
to
appropriate
it
as
exotic
ethnographic
material
for
European
discourse.
They
are
more
like
moths
drawn
to
a
flame
than
swallows
demonstrating
the
possibilities
of
air
for
imaginative
flight."
Always
an
extoller
of
such
flight,
Thompson
prefers
cultural
criticism
(Thomas
Pynchon's
is
his
example)
able
"to
perform
the
culture
in
the
process
of
describing
it."
The
American
Replacement
of
Nature
is
indeed
a
performance.
(Nowhere
is
this
more
apparent
than
in
the
multiple
point‐of‐
view/three
camera
shoot
dream
sequence
that
inconclusively
ends
the
book.)
"In
an
electronic
culture,"
Thompson
demonstrates
convincingly,
"one
cannot
think,
one
can
only
entertain
ideas";
and
yet
Thompson's
thinking,
metaphorically
rich,
dense
with
allusion
(full
appreciation
and
comprehension
requires
the
reader
to
recognize
references
to
everything
from
"punctuated
equilibrium"
to
The
Tibetan
Book
of
the
Dead
and
Andrei
Tarkovsky)
nevertheless
entertains.
A
true
"thinker"
in
E.
M.
Cioran's
sense
("thinkers,"
notes
the
Romanian
essayist,
write
for
other
writers,
while
philosophers
write
only
for
professors),
Thompson
traverses
an
incomparable
variety
of
topics
with
a
playfulness
that
makes
him
always
readable
even
when
dealing
with
the
most
abstruse
material.
(How
many
writers
can
forge
a
description
of
wrestler
Hulk
Hogan's
trademark
off‐the‐mat
resurrection
and
an
evocation
of
William
Butler
Yeats'
"The
Second
Coming"
into
a
powerful
commentary
on
ecological
destruction?)
T h e C o l l e c t e d W o r k s o f D a v i d L a v e r y 43
Literalists,
no
doubt,
will
find
it
difficult
to
decipher
Thompson's
tone.
They
may
not
understand
that
when
he
refers
to
"New
Age
sissies,"
or
quips
that
"Any
peasant
with
a
dumb
cow
can
make
whipped
cream,
but
it
takes
a
chemical
factory
to
make
Cool
Whip,"
it
is
in
fact,
as
the
context
in
each
case
makes
clear,
the
patriarchal
mind‐set
and
obsessive
technology
for
which
he
has
no
sympathy.
When
they
read
the
following
account
of
contemporary
Los
Angeles,
they
may
take
it
to
be
a
paranoid
raving
and
not
a
metaphoric
alternative
history:
My
city
was
attacked
in
the
fifties
by
General
Motors
with
poison
gas
warfare
in
the
skies
of
L.A.
First
they
infiltrated
the
local
government,
then
they
took
out
the
infrastructure
of
the
city
by
demolishing
the
Pacific
Electric
railways,
and
then
when
they
had
a
clearer
path
for
their
land
war,
they
invaded
with
millions
of
poison
gas‐emitting
tanks.
With
a
characteristic
relish
for
metaphor,
Thompson
speaks
disdainfully
of
contemporary
"dehydrated"
non‐fiction
shot‐up
with
"shelf‐life
additives
put
in
by
editors
and
packaging
by
the
sales
department
so
that
it
can
be
quickly
microwaved
in
two
minute
radiations
on
TV
talks
shows,"
plugged
by
"microwaved
celebrities
[who]
grow
cold
as
fast
as
they
grew
hot."
The
American
Replacement
of
Nature
is
not
microwaveable,
nor
does
Thompson
seek
celebrity
(though
he
has
been
interviewed
by
Bill
Moyers).
Earlier
books
have
ranged
over
the
perennial
philosophy
and
the
philosophy
of
science,
high
culture
and
low,
the
Gaia
hypothesis
and
the
ecology
of
mind,
Teilhard
de
Chardin
and
Sri
Aurobindo,
kundalini
yoga
and
oral
sex.
The
American
Replacement
of
Nature
is
similarly
eclectic.
Even
a
partial
catalogue
(the
book,
alas,
has
no
index)
would
have
to
include:
the
dubious
motives
of
Biosphere
II;
Omni
as
a
postmodernist
Popular
Mechanics;
a
phenomenological
analysis
of
Disney
World's
Pirates
of
the
Caribbean;
noise
as
"the
solvent
of
Renaissance
individuality";
the
health
effects
of
ELF
(extremely
low‐
frequency
radiation);
cyberpunk
science
fiction;
the
contemporary
relevance
of
occult
philosopher
Rudolf
Steiner;
Marshall
McLuhan,
Jean
Gebser,
and
Owen
Barfield
on
the
evolution
of
consciousness;
Disney
"Imagineering"
compared
to
deconstruction;
the
Catholic
Church
as
the
"world's
first
multinational
corporation";
the
evolutionary
causes
of
the
Great
Depression;
jazz
as
the
manifestation
of
a
new
economic
order;
the
movie
theatre
in
the
Depression
as
a
"mystery
school
in
which
T h e C o l l e c t e d W o r k s o f D a v i d L a v e r y 44
people
could
pass
from
misery
to
happiness";
pollution
as
"the
new
source
of
improvisation,
the
new
'ground'
for
economic
value";
Jungian‐style
interpretations
of
1)
planetary
ecological
damage,
2)
Third
World
drug
trafficing,
and
3)
the
Persian
Gulf
War;
the
"cultural
entropy
of
global
religious
warfare
from
Ireland
to
Indonesia
to
Idaho";
the
philosophizing
of
Richard
Rorty
as
"the
frustrated
shriek
of
a
pettifogging
clerk";
the
essentially
patriarchal
mind‐set
of
his
friend,
poet
Wendell
Berry;
Islamic
"nativistic
attacks"
on
airlines
compared
to
the
Ghost
Dance
movement
of
the
plains
Indians;
Ted
Turner
as
"the
true
dharma
heir
in
the
esoteric
lineage
of
Walt
Disney";
Ronald
Reagan
as
"the
first
entirely
Audio‐Animatronic
President";
George
Bush
as
the
perfect
President
for
our
"TV‐shortened
attention
span";
why
Saddam
"ironically
energized
the
system
he
wished
to
annul";
an
impressive
catalog
of
potential
tribal
and
racial
wars
across
the
globe;
the
skinhead
movement
as
the
"ghost
dance
of
the
rednecks";
a
meditation
on
the
"industrial
delicacies"
available
in
an
Arkansas
supermarket;
chicken
farms
as
concentration
camps;
"the
debasement
of
food
in
America"
as
"a
very
clever
and
rather
insidious
preparation
for
a
more
general
debasement
of
our
politics
as
culture"
(in
the
U.S.,
Thompson
writes,"even
the
food
is
a
moon
shot,
a
fast
food
rocket
aimed
away
from
the
Earth");
addiction
as
"adaptation
.
.
.
to
the
newly
emerging
artificial
environment";
the
Gnostic
visions
of
robotics
pioneer
Hans
Moravec;
an
analysis
of
the
prophetic
value
of
Moby
Dick;
the
"autopoetic"
nature
of
American
capitalism
and
its
uncanny
ability
to
"generate
new
planetary
mythological
systems"
.
.
.
For
the
most
part
Thompson's
method
is
that
of
the
Nietzschean
aphorist,
a
mountain
climber
leaping
from
one
peak
to
the
next.
His
descents
nevertheless
lead
to
some
valuable
discoveries
in
several
significant
valleys.
He
finds
the
now‐emergent
medium
known
as
Virtual
Reality
a
momentous
evolutionary
step.
He
discovers
in
the
special
body
suit
VR
users
must
wear
"a
technological
literalization
of
the
esoteric
subtle
body,
or
etheric
body,
the
pranamayakosa
of
Yoga
and
Tibetan
Buddhism."
Nor
can
it
be
accidental,
he
writes,
that
the
goggles
and
helmet
of
VR
"give
the
appearance
of
being
a
new
Neanderthal,
supraorbital
ridge,
an
evolution
of
the
hominid
forehead
in
which
the
Self
becomes
the
theater
itself."
In
The
American
Replacement
of
Nature's
largest
section
(the
book
is
divided
into
five
parts,
intended
to
give
it
the
appearance
of
a
VCR
deck
or
the
face
of
a
remote
control
device:
"Fast
Foreword,"
"Play,"
"Record,"
"Erase,"
"Reverse"),
Thompson
explores
"Disney's
World:
The
American
Replacement
of
Culture."
Having
T h e C o l l e c t e d W o r k s o f D a v i d L a v e r y 45
learned
in
his
youth
the
power
of
the
"Disney
version"—autobiographical
reminiscences
tell
of
his
first
initiation
as
a
child
into
the
mysteries
of
the
evolution
of
consciousness
while
watching
Fantasia—Thompson
finds
Disneyism
"secular
camouflage
for
a
civic
religion":
"In
the
midst
of
the
Depression,
Walt
Disney
received
his
inspiration
to
recover
the
archaic
through
modern
media;
his
mind
drifted
off
into
a
reverie,
sank
to
archaic
levels
of
consciousness
in
totemism
and
animism,
and
resurfaced
with
an
animated
mouse."
(Ronald
Reagan,
Thompson
suggests,
provocatively,
was
Disney's
Lenin;
i.e.
Lenin
was
to
Marx
as
Reagan
was
to
Disney.)
The
Persian
Gulf
War
receives
twenty
two
pages
of
attention,
as
Thompson
tries
to
explain
why
an
avowed
opponent
of
American
involvement
in
Viet
Nam's
fear
that
Saddam's
belligerency
could
lead
to
"a
dark
age
of
universal
ethnic
violence"
forced
him
to
become
(to
his
own
great
surprise)
a
supporter
of
George
Bush's
expulsion
of
Iraq
from
Kuwait.
But
the
war
itself,
Thompson
is
well
aware,
cannot
itself
lead
to
any
New
World
Order:
"If
we
are
to
progress
from
an
electronic
collective
.
.
.
to
a
planetary
culture
of
more
individually
enlightened
consciousness,"
Thompson
concludes,
"then
we
need
to
have
another
renaissance
on
the
other
side
of
this
last
crusade."
An
entire
section
is
devoted
to
"CNN:
The
American
Replacement
of
Historical
Reality."
(In
reality
it
is
these
pages
which
become
Thompson's
interpretation
of
Gulf
War.)
CNN,
which
came
into
world
prominence
because
of
the
war,
Thompson
hypothesizes,
may
itself
represent
a
key
phase
in
mankind's
evolution.
The
CNN
Center
in
Atlanta,
he
suggests,
can
be
taken
as
"a
rendering
of
Teilhard
de
Chardin's
noosphere,"
"a
planetary
lattice
of
satellites
in
which
non‐stop
24‐hours‐a‐day
news
gives
us
the
experience
of
time
under
control—history
under
new
American
management."
But
such
media
imperialism
may
have
positive
repercussions:
"If
we
are
lucky
or
blessed,
global
electronics
will
continue
to
uplink
individuals
in
Baghdad
and
Vilnius
and
Riga
until
a
new
world
civilization
is
so
widespread
that
it
makes
it
impossible
for
any
dictator
to
lock
up
a
cult
or
a
culture."
"The
world
has
had
enough
of
nation‐states
and
their
armies,"
Thompson
concludes;
"it
now
needs
places
in
which
to
experience
itself
as
a
world."
Paradoxically,
CNN
and
other
global
electronic
media
may,
in
their
very
placelessness,
provide
such
a
place.
Thompson's
great
subject
throughout
is
his
own
native
land.
His
criticism
of
the
"ever
teenage
culture"
of
the
United
States—of
"Dan
Quayle's
Spaceship
America"—is
unrelenting
and,
coming
from
an
author
who
coined
the
phrase
"the
Los
T h e C o l l e c t e d W o r k s o f D a v i d L a v e r y 46
Angelization
of
the
planet,"
not
surprising.
Like
the
German
poet
Rilke
("Now,
from
America,
empty
indifferent
things
are
pouring
across,
sham
things,
dummy
life"),
he
finds
the
land
of
his
birth
the
seedbed
of
the
ersatz,
a
"peculiar
wedding
of
low
kitsch
and
high
tech":
In
truth,
America
is
extremely
uncomfortable
with
nature;
hence
its
culturally
sophisticated
preference
for
the
fake
and
unnatural,
from
Cheeze
Whiz
sprayed
out
of
an
aerosol
can
onto
a
Styrofoam
potatoed
chip,
to
Cool
Whip
smoothing
out
the
absence
of
taste
in
those
attractively
red,
genetically
engineered
monster
strawberries.
Surprisingly,
The
American
Replacement
of
Nature's
critique
of
American
simulation
is,
by
his
own
admission
(a
first),
that
of
"a
patriot."
Thompson's
new
hesitant
faith
in
America
may
seem
at
first
to
be
the
all‐too‐
typical
turn‐to‐the‐right
which
has
characterized
the
aging
of
many
early
radicals,
from
William
Wordsworth
to
John
Dos
Passos,
but
it
is
in
fact
deeply
ironic
and
of
a
piece
with
his
larger
faith
in
the
evolution
of
consciousness:
So
call
me
an
optimist
in
that
I
blindly
choose
to
see
our
dark
ages
as
temporary,
give
or
take
a
century
or
two.
And
put
me
down
as
a
patriot
who
saw
in
the
repellent,
ugly,
and
evil
of
our
American
society's
revelation
of
a
planetary
culture
approaching
us
on
the
other
side
of
catastrophic
transformation.
Throughout
The
American
Replacement
of
Nature,
Thompson
returns
to
his
underlying
hypothesis:
that
the
"esoteric
destiny"
of
America
in
the
"planetization
of
humanity"
(a
concept
he
borrows,
of
course
from
Teilhard
but
which
he
reads
with
an
Hegelian
grasp
of
dialectic)
"does
seem
to
be
that
of
the
catalytic
enzyme
that
breaks
down
all
the
traditional
cultures
of
the
world,
be
they
Asiatic,
Islamic,
or
European,"
a
necessary
dissolution
(and
disillusionment)
which
may
well
seem
for
those
undergoing
it
like
"an
intellectual
dark
age,"
but
prelude
to,
in
a
world‐
historical
irony,
"a
new
global
culture
that
will
become
humanity's
second
nature."
Damning
America
to
its
evolutionary
fate
with
faint
praise,
Thompson
even
finds
justification
in
the
Muslim
characterization
of
America
as
"the
Great
Satan":
for
indeed
the
new
human
nature
that
awaits
us
"is
so
artificial,
so
opposite
to
anything
T h e C o l l e c t e d W o r k s o f D a v i d L a v e r y 47
that
a
traditional
person
would
wish
to
call
cultural
or
natural,
that
it
appears
on
the
horizon
of
the
human
as
something
inhuman,
monstrous,
and
evil."
But
neither
the
now
moribund
Communist
menace
or
the
Islamic
Ghost
Dance
has
been
or
will
be
capable
of
preventing
the
advent
of
this
new
humanity:
"there
seems
little
chance,"
Thompson
concludes,
"of
getting
out
of
this
century
with
the
same
human
nature
with
which
we
entered
it."
The
Age
of
Missing
Information
is
the
record
of—or,
more
precisely
a
meditation
on—an
experiment.
It
is
an
extended
comparison
and
contrast
essay
on
two
days,
on
two
realms
of
experience,
two
sources
of
information:
1)
two
thousand
hours
of
videotaped
television,
all
recorded
on
a
single
day
(May
3,
1990)
on
the
93
channels
of
Fairfax,
Virginia's
cable
television
and
2)
a
summer
day
spent
entirely
in
nature.
A
chapter
of
description
and
commentary,
call
and
response,
to
an
hour
of
television
is
followed
by
reflections
on
his
time
in
the
"real
world."
I
must
admit
I
found
myself
reading
rapidly
through
the
book's
nature
writing,
not
because
it
is
ineffectual
or
dull,
but
because,
as
I
quickly,
discovered,
McKibben's
talents
as
a
television
commentator
are
impressive.
With
McKibben
in
charge
of
the
grazing,
the
"vidiocy"
(Thompson's
word)
of
quiz
show,
infomercial,
sitcom,
music
video,
televangelism,
and
talk
show
becomes
food
for
substantial
thought
and
provides,
thanks
to
the
heuristic
value
engendered
by
his
experiment,
meaningful
discoveries
about
television's
subversion
of
the
immediate,
its
polishing
away
of
the
patina
of
the
real.
Many
pages
of
the
book
chronicle
McKibben's
attempt
to
render
into
words
the
rich,
various,
and
vacuous
super‐text
of
television‐as‐a‐whole
at
any
given
moment
of
its
flow.
(As
McLuhan
taught,
the
meaning
of
a
medium
can
only
be
expressed
in
another
medium.)
But
McKibben's
doomed‐to‐fail
endeavor
to
transcribe
TV's
medium
into
his
own
medium
of
words
becomes
surprisingly
involving.
His
bizarre,
surrealistic
juxtaposition
of
fragments
of
TV's
superfluity—the
book
is
framed
by
what
I
have
deemed
as
"exquisite
corpses,"
surrealistic
exercises
in
random
selectionŸŸŸ—are
distinctly
comic.
And
the
book
is
full
of
other
guilty
pleasures.
Frequent
TV
watchers
will
enjoy
many
shocks
of
recognition
as
they
realize
that
they
too
have
seen
an
unhealthy
amount
of
Brady
Bunch
or
Divorce
Court
or
Super
Sloppy
Double
Dare
—and
not
even
in
the
service
of
a
scientific
experiment.
For
the
most
part
his
insights
about
TV
itself—that
television
alters
our
perception
of
the
natural
world;
that
it
functions
as
an
"emotional
thermostat";
that
T h e C o l l e c t e d W o r k s o f D a v i d L a v e r y 48
it
is
"less
an
art
form
than
the
outlet
for
a
utility";
that
its
content
is
almost
immaterial
(television,
he
notes,
"can
find
subjects
of
interest
to
all
only
by
erasing
content");
that
television
reduces
all
that
came
before
its
existence
to
"prehistory"
(the
medium's
four
decades,
McKibben
writes,
now
"seem
utterly
normative
to
us,
the
only
conceivable
pattern
for
human
life");
that
television
preempts
our
suspicion
of
it
by
ceaselessly
belittling
itself,
adopting
a
"deride
and
conquer"
strategy—these
are
not
really
new.
Jerry
Mander,
Todd
Gitlin,
Mark
Crispin
Miller—all
have
written
urgently
and
incisively
on
such
themes,
and
McKibben
duly
credits
their
influence.
Like
Thompson,
he
casts
his
nets
wide.
(A
good
one
third
of
The
Age
of
Missing
Information
could
be
characterized
as
digression,
asides,
usually
interesting
in
their
own
right,
not
so
much
about
television
as
suggested
by
its
Rorschach
patterns.)
He
explains
why
it
is
more
important
to
understand
the
Brady
Bunch
than
Twin
Peaks.
He
analyzes
television's
role
in
the
"globalization
of
markets."
He
exposes
the
false
appeal
of
animals
on
TV
("nature
documentaries
are
as
absurdly
action‐packed
as
the
soap
operas,
where
a
life's
worth
of
divorce,
adultery,
and
sudden
death
are
crammed
into
a
week's
worth
of
watching").
He
contrasts
God
in
nature
vs.
God
on
TV.
He
speculates
on
why
it
is
that
the
memories
of
Baby
Boomers
are
"spookily
familiar."
He
shows
why
an
ad
for
"Glassmates"
reveals
how
paltry
are
"the
kind
of
dragons
we
have
left
to
slay"
in
an
age
of
consumption.
He
wonders
about
TV's
motives
in
"actively
.
.
.
savaging
.
.
.
an
old
order
it
once
helped
set
in
stone."
He
traces
the
evolution
of
teenage
telephone
secrecy
from
Leave
it
to
Beaver
to
One
Day
at
a
Time.
He
investigates
the
"breakup
of
[the]
Donna
Reed
order."
He
explains
TV's
complete
inability
to
bring
war
into
our
living
rooms.
He
considers
the
techno‐effects
of
virtual
reality
and
HDTV.
He
ponders
what
would
happen
if
God
delivered
the
Ten
Commandments
on
the
Today
show.
He
recounts
how
Finland
terminated
a
McDonald's
ad
because
"it
falsely
leads
people
to
believe
that
a
Big
Mac
can
replace
friends
and
ease
loneliness."
He
realizes
television's
role
in
making
weather
less
real.
He
exposes
TV's
inauthentic
celebration
of
choice:
"As
much
as
it
loves
choice
.
.
.
it
doesn't
actually
believe
in
choosing.
It
urges
us
to
choose
everything—this
and
this
and
this
as
well."
He
unearths
television's
secret
link
to
contemporary
disembodiment:
If
it
is
doing
its
job
"correctly,"
you
lose
consciousness
of
your
body,
at
least
until
a
sort
of
achy
torpor
begins
to
assert
itself,
and
maybe
after
some
hours
a
dull
headache,
and
of
course
the
insatiable
hunger
that
you
never
really
T h e C o l l e c t e d W o r k s o f D a v i d L a v e r y 49
notice
but
that
somehow
demands
a
constant
stream
of
chips
and
soda.
If
you
off
your
nose
to
spite
your
face,
or
for
any
other
reason,
it
wouldn't
impair
your
ability
to
watch
television.
"People
who
didn't
grow
up
with
television,"
McKibben
reminds,
"tend
not
to
understand
its
real
power—they
already
had
a
real
world
to
compare
with
the
pictures
on
the
screen.
People
my
age
didn't—we
were
steeped
in
television,
flavored
for
life."
He
recalls
that
as
a
child
"TV
was
like
a
third
parent—a
source
of
ideas
and
information
and
impressions.
And
not
such
a
bad
parent—always
with
time
to
spare
always
eager
to
please,
often
funny."
A
baby
boomer,
a
decade
younger
than
Thompson,
McKibben
grew
up
with
television
and
immerses
himself
willingly
in
it,
not
with
metaphysical
intent,
but
just
to
watch
what
he
calls
"TV
TV."
Continuing
his
metaphor,
he
compares
his
experiment
to
"spending
the
holidays
with
your
parents
once
you've
grown
up—in
three
days
you
comprehend
more
on
a
conscious
level
about
your
mother
than
you
did
in
twenty
years
of
living
with
her."
And
what
he
discovers
is
that
the
parent
he
had
once
loved
is
in
fact
dysfunctional.
What
is
new
here
is
the
context
in
which
such
ideas
are
presented.
When
Susan
Sontag
issued
her
call
for
a
new
"ecology
of
images"
two
decades
ago
(in
On
Photography),
she
had
in
mind
the
application
of
the
principles
of
a
then
emergent
science
to
the
proliferation
of
media
messages
in
order
to
safeguard
our
consciousness
against
their
possible
polluting
effects.
The
Age
of
Missing
Information
answers
her
call,
partly
through
its
own
metaphors
(consider,
for
example,
McKibben's
observation
that
"The
most
fanatic
environmentalist
doesn't
recycle
with
half
the
relish
of
television
producers"),
but
most
of
all
in
its
project
to
study
television
as
a
phenomenon
in
and
of
the
natural
world.
(The
book's
jacket
shows
a
"Peaceable
Kingdom"
scene
with
lion
and
lamb
lying
down
together—before
a
television
set.)
McKibben's
thesis
is
simple
and
serious,
unmuddied
by
paradox,
presented
up
front:
We
believe
that
we
live
in
the
"age
of
information,"
that
there
has
been
an
information
"explosion,"
an
information
"revolution."
While
in
a
certain
narrow
sense
this
is
the
case,
in
many
important
ways
just
the
opposite
is
true.
We
also
live
at
a
moment
of
deep
ignorance,
when
vital
knowledge
that
T h e C o l l e c t e d W o r k s o f D a v i d L a v e r y 50
humans
have
always
possessed
about
who
were
and
where
we
live
seems
beyond
our
reach.
An
Unenlightenment.
An
age
of
missing
information.
In
THe
End
of
Nature,
McKibben's
meticulously
careful
pondering
on
recent
ecological
controversy
led
him
to
conclude
that
the
most
significant
effect
of
mankind's
pollution
of
the
environment
may
well
be
philosophical.
The
hole
in
the
ozone
layer,
acid
rain,
possible
global
warming—these
developments
are
important,
according
to
McKibben,
not
because
of
their
(much‐debated)
meteorological
ramifications
but
because
they
mark
the
coming
of
a
"postnatural
world."
We
have
domesticated
the
planet,
THe
End
of
Nature
argues,
extinguished,
perhaps
forever,
the
existence
of
the
inhuman.
"We
have
changed
the
atmosphere,
and
thus
we
are
changing
the
weather.
By
changing
the
weather,
we
make
every
spot
on
Earth
man‐
made
and
artificial.
We
have
deprived
nature
of
its
independence,
and
that
is
fatal
to
its
meaning.
Nature's
independence
is
its
meaning;
without
it
there
is
nothing
but
us."
McKibben's
new
book
returns
to
the
same
important
argument,
for
the
"missing
information"
of
its
title—intelligence
about
which
television
as
a
medium
can
tell
us
nothing—turns
out
to
be
"about
the
physical
limits
of
a
finite
world.
About
sufficiency
and
need,
about
proper
scale
and
real
time,
about
the
sensual
pleasure
of
exertion
and
exposure
to
the
elements,
about
the
human
need
for
community
and
for
solid,
real
skills."
At
one
point
in
his
meditations
on
Walt
Disney,
Thompson
considers
the
meaning
of
the
word
"nature"
as
used
by
contemporary
naturalists—like
Wendell
Berry
and
Bill
McKibben.
The
"balance
of
nature"
as
these
writers
use
it,
Thompson
insists,
is
in
fact
a
"cultural
fiction."
"What
Bill
McKibben
tends
to
think
of
as
nature
in
his
Adirondack
musings
.
.
.",
he
contends,
"owes
far
more
to
the
culture
of
Sierra
Club
calendars,
the
photographs
of
Ansel
Adams,
and
the
painting
of
Constable
and
Caspar
David
Friedrich
than
it
does
to
the
cosmic
activities
of
the
Creator."
The
book
Thompson
has
in
mind
is
McKibben's
earlier
work,
THe
End
of
Nature
(1989),
and
yet
it
is
unlikely
that
The
Age
of
Missing
Information
would
escape
his
criticism.
From
Thompson's
visionary
perspective,
McKibben's
ecological
stance
is
monolithic,
moralistic,
and
domestic.
"Home
means
a
lot
to
moralists,"
Thompson
writes,
"but
the
mystic"—and
it
is
clear
he
has
himself
partly
in
mind—"is
society's
alien
and
is
not
allowed
to
have
a
home
smaller
than
the
universe,
and
any
time
he
tries
to
settle
for
less,
to
settle
down,
and
to
set
up
fences,
God
appears
as
the
T h e C o l l e c t e d W o r k s o f D a v i d L a v e r y 51
moving
whirlwind."
With
no
voices
in
the
sky
to
serve
as
inspiration,
no
privileged
knowledge
of
the
turning
gyres
of
history,
McKibben's
more
darkly
pessimistic
book
is
necessarily
of
smaller
scope,
adhering
to
a
sustainable,
literally
quotidian
economy,
which,
in
its
minimalist
fashion,
is
no
less
ambitious
than
Thompson's,
as
faithful
to
the
earthly
as
Thompson's
is
to
the
timeless.
Review Essay
Television
and
the
Legal
System.
London
and
New
York:
Routledge,
2010;
bibliography,
filmography,
index;
141
pages.
We
now
have
Barbara
Villez’
valuable
Television
and
the
Legal
System
in
English.
First
published
in
French
as
Séries
télé:
visions
de
la
justice
in
the
middle
of
the
decade
by
the
Presses
Universitaires
de
France,
it
has
now
been
republished
by
Routledge
in
its
“Law,
Society
and
Popular
Culture”
series,
translated
by
the
author,
a
native
New
Yorker
now
teaching
at
University
of
Paris
8.
Reading
it
again
now,
after
struggling
through
the
French
version,
I
must
admit
to
only
grasping
a
fraction
of
its
subtlety
and
breadth.
It
is
certainly
no
surprise,
coming
as
it
does
from
one
of
the
seminal
European
figures
in
the
development
of
the
study
of
comparative
media
and
law,
that
this
monograph
offers
an
important
guide,
proposing
new
ways
to
think
about
how
the
import/export
of
television
legal
drama
inexorably
influences
legal
culture
in
a
nation
like
France.
“American
citizens
know
their
rights
and
how
their
judicial
system
works,”
Villez
writes
in
an
important
passage,
although
there
has
never
been
an
obligatory
program
on
the
subject
included
in
school
curricula,
contrary
to
France.
It
is
likely
that
a
vast
majority
of
the
population
in
the
United
States
has
acquired
this
information
simply
from
watching
courtroom
dramas,
perhaps
religiously
and
for
some,
from
a
very
young
age.
If
the
French
television
channels
buy
American
law
series
and
French
viewers
watch,
when
programming
is
reasonable,
then
it
should
be
no
surprise
that
people
in
France
have
acquired
criteria
on
the
American
legal
system
rather
than
on
their
own.
Watching
the
American
law
series
produced
since
the
1990s,
which
provide
a
complex
image
of
law
and
justice,
the
French
have
become
aware
of
questions
which
are
not
foreign
to
their
own
society,
one
that
has
become
just
as
judicialized
and
complex.
Thus,
it
is
perhaps
not
only
the
quality
of
these
programs
which
lure
the
French
viewer,
but
also
the
questions
dealt
with
and
which
echo
those
of
all
modern
societies.
Villez
also
suggests
discerning
ways
to
think
about
each
of
the
major
players
in
such
dramas,
from
judges
to
juries
and
contemplates
lawyers
as
both
mythic
figures
and
models.
T h e C o l l e c t e d W o r k s o f D a v i d L a v e r y 53
Television
and
the
Legal
System
is,
however,
also
a
first‐rate
book
about
television.
So
much
writing
about
television
these
days—the
Open
Court
series
(The
Sopranos
and
Philosophy,
Seinfeld
and
Philosophy),
the
BFI
TV
Classics,
for
example—
often
have
little
or
nothing
to
say
about
television
itself.
Villez
offers
not
only
important
insights
concerning
the
particularities
of
television
narrative
but
a
rich
survey
of
seminal
American
legal
dramas
as
well.
Whether
writing
about
Perry
Mason,
Ally
McBeal,
Picket
Fences,
or
The
Practice,
she
demonstrate
an
indigenous
knowledge
of
the
genre.
Comparing
developments
across
decades
or
laying
out
a
valuable
typology
of
the
genre,
Villez’s
writing
is
consistently
clear
and
judicious.
She
even
examines
the
industry
question
of
whether
to
“purchase
or
produce”
and
ponders
the
implication
of
the
increasing
international
circulation
of
television,
especially
American
television,
for
understanding
legal
systems.
Television
and
the
Legal
System
is
not
merely
a
translation.
Villez
has
updated,
in
an
afterword,
developments
since
the
book
was
published
in
France
and
given
us
a
thorough
and
useful
filmography
as
well.
May
I
add
as
well,
as
an
admirer
of
the
form,
that
the
book’s
epigraphs
are
a
thing
of
beauty?
I
count
myself
lucky
to
have
heard
Barbara
Villez
speak
on
more
than
one
occasion.
The
same
combination
of
engaging
modesty
and
critical
acumen
she
radiates
in
person
shines
through
these
pages
as
well.