Friday, July 1, 2011

Books, 420 Characters (June 27 - July 1) Postman & Bernhard


Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves To Death; Public Discourse In The Age Of Show Business

Media culture tracts expire faster than skim milk, yet this 1985 volume on the collusion between journalism and entertainment has only grown in stature since publication. Game show elections, education as amusement, news as easily-digestible diversion – Postman saw it all at the dawn of all-encompassing media. Forget the totalitarian nightmare of 1984. Huxley predicted rightly we’d come to love our oppression.


Thomas Bernhard, My Prizes: An Accounting

Charlie Sheen is not a bad boy – Thomas Bernhard was a bad boy. The Austrian writer, whose will denied his home country future publication, remembers little about his literary awards aside from the monetary prizes attached and personal slights suffered during each ceremony, most from politicians and other writers. The personification of ungracious, he bites the hand that feeds him and chews with his mouth open.

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