Bitterness. Fear. Panic. Outright horror. Our times, according to the shelves of our bookstores, suck.
I failed to receive from the publisher the book I intended to review for this article, so one day I drove over to a nearby bookstore and headed reflexively for the Current Affairs section to see what was new. This happens pretty regularly. (Why publishers don’t jump on any opportunity for free press, I’ll never grasp.)
So there I was, lingering between the volumes that describe our times and trying to unearth something enlightening, entertaining, or otherwise worthwhile. But after just a glance at my options, I realized that nothing looked appetizing in the least. Crowding haphazardly along the shelves, the titles all boasted a repugnant flavor, a bitterness born of more than a little fear, panic, or outright horror. Our times, according to the shelves, suck.
Oh, and be afraid.
I remembered a lecture I attended several months back: The CEO of a major advertising agency presented his vision of the transforming media multiverse and advertising’s future therein. He talked about the over-saturation of media outlets and the consumer’s growing awareness of (gasp) autonomy. He made an obligatory but noncommittal reference to YouTube, a medium so boundless and cutting-edge that no one has any idea what to do with it other than post clips of themselves dancing poorly. (I’m pretty sure that YouTube is the technological equivalent of Kevin Costner: There must be some appropriate application out there, but no one can guarantee that the effort required to identify said application will be worth the payoff.)
Anyhow. The blustery CEO rallied his oration to what could only be the Big Point. He prepared us by asking several Big Rhetorical Questions in anticipation of the Big Question That He Would Actually Answer: What emotion currently defines the era we live in?
Answer: Fear.
The tension in the room matched the declaration's galactic weight, and a hush fell across the audience when he acknowledged that he’d found all this out from a research team from Harvard Business School. He then dithered a little and moved on to the next topic without explaining what we were to do with this intellectual windfall. Eventually, we all shrugged, and that was it.
The advertising industry’s answer to the fear phenomenon, we must suppose, is to peddle 60- and 90-second nuggets of escapism fine-tuned to distract consumers from their constant, all-consuming dread. While searching through the titles in the Current Affairs section, I realized the publishing houses’ equal and opposite reaction to the whole fear issue: Feed the fire. And then pour a little gas on it. Maybe a thimble of napalm. Burn, baby.
On bookshelves these days, war is certainly on the top of our minds, though not always in the way we expect. We find a war of ideology in The Republican War on Science and a war of caste in War on the Middle Class. (The latter’s cover photo would benefit greatly if Lou Dobbs, the self-appointed champion of the middle class, were to raise his middle finger.) We are treated to some lesser conflicts that hint at varying degrees of pugilism, like the one-sided George W. Bush Versus the Constitution and the decidedly less conceptual Condi Versus Hilary .
Of course, there are many volumes whose shared subject is The War, most notably The Iraq Study Group Report, in which the first sentence reads, “The situation in Iraq is grave and deteriorating.” Though the prestigious authors, it seems, moonlight as masters of the obvious, someone clearly needs to say (or bellow) it directly into the Bush administration’s collective ear. Because even if the road to Baghdad was paved with The Best Intentions, the White House can only be in a State of Denial over the whole Fiasco(a title that hovers in the largest font I’ve ever seen over the weirdly whimsical subtitle The American Military Adventure in Iraq).
Maybe the whole mess almost makes you wish you were, like Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country. Fortunately, Maya Angelou, Vaclav Havel, Desmond Tutu and othershave convened to gently remind us that The Impossible Will Take a Little While, and they’re probably right. At the moment, though, The End of Oil remains a precious dream.
Whether the problem at hand is war, terrorism or politics, neither a major publishing house nor a marketing lecture can be expected to provide thoughtful, valuable insight into the matter. But when two sides of the same philosophically thin coin acknowledge the prevalence of fear as our culture’s primary motivating force, it’s unsettling – even if the underlying principle is the promotion of distracting (albeit nifty) gadgets, as in the case of the advertising exec. But at least that’s his actual job. The unfortunate state of Current Affairs is worsened when fostered by institutions drunk on their own integrity, regardless of whether that fostering is a tidal wave of terror in Barnes & Noble or the diminutive doomsday bullhorn that is Wolf Blitzer’s larynx. Because fear as anything other than a private note of caution or a trigger for the sympathetic nervous system is no more than a thriving emotional cul-de-sac.
Before today’s pandering publishers and obfuscating executives, before anyone guessed that Kiefer Sutherland would become the archetypal hero of our times, and long before Dick Cheney took on the likeness of Darth Vader, FDR told us what the only thing in this world worthy of our fear actually was.
And it’s not Wolf Blitzer’s larynx.
Between the Covers is a biweekly book review and publishing analysis.
