The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, by Naomi Klein
Speaking of a conscientious adulthood, I briefly considered going to a bar tonight, but opted to stay home and get started on this book instead.
Several years ago I read and loved No Logo, Klein's best-known work. I spent a lot more time reading Adbusters and listening to Democracy Now whenever that was, and I put The Shock Doctrine on my Christmas list in the interest of fending off complacency. So far, Shock Doctrine is a little ... ham handed? just unsubtle maybe? ... but extremely informative, bursting with carefully referenced facts and plenty of reasons to maintain a good head of outrage.
Monday, February 2, 2009
Finished whilst on vacation
Buying In: The Secret Dialogue Between What We Buy and Who We Are, by Rob Walker
Weird Like Us: My Bohemian America, by Ann Powers
Toward the end, these mostly different books came to feel like they were saying the same things. There's more than one way to create an identity, an unconventional identity, an adulthood. If you're a grown up, "selling out" is difficult to define. If you want to live a conscientious life, you have to chart the course yourself, and it's best not to let your guard down more than a little. Those who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.
Powers' book was written about ten years before Walker's, and that is most evident in the different discussions of success and selling out in alternative youth culture. Walker gives us the impression that many young aspiring artists and musicians of today would be just plain puzzled by, say, R.E.M.'s refusal to have its music used in commercials. However, my significant other's dispatches from the college course he teaches in music subcultures would suggest otherwise. Teenage punks, at least, still get worked up over old-fashioned concepts like "authenticity."
I also got a kick out of the way Powers divided her chapters: friends, roommates/crazy living situations, sex, drugs, thrifts stores/dumpster diving/curb finds, poorly paid jobs, youth itself. Indeed, all are staples of a certain kind of lifestyle, one I never fully lived but have been within sight of since high school.
In related news, I will be 30 this year.
Weird Like Us: My Bohemian America, by Ann Powers
Toward the end, these mostly different books came to feel like they were saying the same things. There's more than one way to create an identity, an unconventional identity, an adulthood. If you're a grown up, "selling out" is difficult to define. If you want to live a conscientious life, you have to chart the course yourself, and it's best not to let your guard down more than a little. Those who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.
Powers' book was written about ten years before Walker's, and that is most evident in the different discussions of success and selling out in alternative youth culture. Walker gives us the impression that many young aspiring artists and musicians of today would be just plain puzzled by, say, R.E.M.'s refusal to have its music used in commercials. However, my significant other's dispatches from the college course he teaches in music subcultures would suggest otherwise. Teenage punks, at least, still get worked up over old-fashioned concepts like "authenticity."
I also got a kick out of the way Powers divided her chapters: friends, roommates/crazy living situations, sex, drugs, thrifts stores/dumpster diving/curb finds, poorly paid jobs, youth itself. Indeed, all are staples of a certain kind of lifestyle, one I never fully lived but have been within sight of since high school.
In related news, I will be 30 this year.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
