Rating: Summary: The Muddled Mind Review: The book's subtitle and the back cover reviews promised some interesting reading, but at page 173, about half way through "The Highway of Despair...", I had had enough. By that point, I was so bored with this bombastic, rambling diatribe on the likes of Bloom, Spielberg, Terri Gross, and the Bush administration (how imaginative, Mr. White!), that I discounted the possibility that he might actually get around to making a point and put the book down for good.
White describes our times as being "....isolated, utterly lacking context, illiterate, illiberal, narcissistic, and empty of useful information." Those same adjectives describe The Middle Mind very well.
Rating: Summary: Blatantly Flawed, but the Topic is Important Review: The harshest reviewer of this book would probably be White himself. Clearly he's no fan of "art as commodity," so the most strinking feature of his book, therefore, is how the title (Why Americans Don't Think for Themselves) and the blurb ('for anyone who's ever been dismayed by the prominence of Celine Dion') disingenuously commodify a work that should, honestly, have zero commercial appeal. The idea of the "Middle Mind" is not presented clearly or consistently. The reason seems to be that the "Middle Mind" was only a launching point (an excuse perhaps) for White's tangental criticisms of politics, English departments, and pop culture. The book's actual topic is only the author's profound dissapointment with the state of the American imagination. White's impassioned criticisms made me think about (and believe in) the importance of America's "social imagination." The ceaseless flow of digressions are at times funny, at times profoundly interesting, but ultimately they confuse the main point of his wandering arguments. The reason it has sold so relatively well is because the reading public is clammoring for a good book about the shortcomings of modern "culture" and about "Why Americans Don't Think for Themselves." White's is certainly a stab in the right direction, but one that ultimately misses the mark. Despite its flaws, it's great reading for any one who values creativity. If you seek intelligent musings on art, music and storytelling, few books will get the mind churning more than this.
Rating: Summary: The Manic Mind Review: The premise of this book is good - the idea that Americans are drifting away from practicing imagination and original thought. However, the rambling, often fragmented arguments that White offers in this book don't effectively support the premise. Reading through the text was much like having a conversation with someone in the midst of the manic phase of a manic/depressive cycle. This topic is deep and complex: It deserves a thoughtfully considered analysis, not simply piles of obscure references, tangential rants and belabored (!!) criticisms.
Worst of all, White asserts that those who don't agree with or understand his rambling fragments are proving his argument and therefore (surprise!) are clearly Middle Mind-ed. What a waste of time.
I hope to see another author, a competent and thoughtful one, go after this topic, as I find it extremely interesting and relevant.
Rating: Summary: Pseudo Artistic Interest and Propagandistic Control Review: The principal point of "The Middle Mind" is that imagination, thought, and creativity are in short supply in our culture, which results in distortions and limitations in such areas as art, philosophy, politics, etc. While many books of this genre tend to broadly criticize society, the approach here is directed mostly towards the upper layers of society. The author defines the "middle mind" as "a vehicle that promises a culture of intelligence, seriousness, and care." The middle mind supports PBS programming, environmental protection, and the arts; it is generally liberal minded. But the author contends that this support is of dubious significance. Because the middle mind is lacking as noted above, it generally is not capable of distinguishing between those matters and items that have genuine quality and merit and those that are merely a pretense. So high culture does not benefit, but suffers, from the influence of the middle mind. The author cites numerous examples from the entertainment industry that to him represent the workings of the middle mind. A somewhat controversial inclusion is NPR's "Fresh Air" program, hosted by Terry Gross, described as "charming and banal." The "Antiques Road Show" of PBS "has turned arts and antiquities into crude commodity fetishism." Ken Burns' PBS documentaries meet the middle mind's requirement that art be "entertaining, fun, and interesting," irrespective of any intellectual content, which is highly limited in Burns' productions. Steven Speilberg's film, "Saving Private Ryan," is subjected to a withering analysis by the author for its failures to contest the premises and conduct of war. The author notes that a primary function of entertainment is to "stabilize the inevitability and naturalness of the present disposition of things." In the author's estimation, academia, especially in the area of the humanities, has become "unwitting allies of the Middle Mind" by assailing unfettered imagination. With the rise of Cultural Studies programs, art and literature are "read" with the political and social agenda of the critic being the foremost criterion of the analysis. Art is not permitted to stand on its own, but must make a congenial social statement. Furthermore, the artist is expected to purge any historically incorrect thinking from his or her work. The author devotes a not insignificant part of the book to multi-page, biting criticisms of other cultural critics and commentators. In one case the author of a "no-brow" social critique is subjected to the author's disdain. Finding fault in the subtleties of argument may be a reason for academics to declare victory, but a large dose of that is not necessarily all that appealing to the general reader who is not even aware of the various targeted critics' work. Moving beyond the realm of entertainment and cultural criticism, the author recognizes that politics, militarism, and business have immense effects on the imagination. Scientific and technological thinking dominate the world of business and the military and have thoroughly penetrated and narrowed the American imagination. A "reverence" for technological thinking squeezes out a broader social imagination. The author castigates a view that holds that this is an age for creative "geeks." He maintains that capitalism co-opts creativity into "vocationalism" or into a narrow job focus. The "creative economy" does not require artists, but only those that are "stupid-smart." The rise of the middle mind may seem at first glance to be innocuous enough. Who cares if the ability to interpret and appreciate art is in short supply? But all is not so benign. Entertainment and the media, in accordance with a middle mind mentality, obfuscate the "inescapable" contradictions of capitalism. This is done primarily by flooding cultural space with a "frenzy of communication and information." The difficulty of penetrating this communication deluge is not be minimized. For instance, there is the "truth" of technical progress that is accepted without question in the US. The fact that most of our advanced technologies are accident-prone is concealed beneath layers of misleading statistics. The political system is a full partner with global capital in bypassing the nation-state as the location of political and economic power. NAFTA, IMF, WTO, and EEU all transcend nations with profound effects. The author contends that we have as a nation adopted a form of unconsciousness regarding the true nature of globalization. At some level, we know that "our lifestyle has for the last half-century been the equivalent of a state of war between ourselves and those folks who will provide us cheap, cheap natural resources and, more recently, cheap, cheap consumer goods." But politicians and the media are skilled at wringing "sentimental patriotism" from the public in support of military actions to maintain a world order that supports our extravagances. Surely the author is not wrong to emphasize the fact that imagination and thought are essential to any sort of progressive, rational, and just society. The essentiality of art is perhaps less obvious. A failure to interpret or appreciate a work of art with the same degree of expertise as the author is not properly an indictment of the overall intellectual capacity of an individual. The book is not especially well organized - it seems patched together at times. Its message is not clear. Incompetent artistic appreciation is unsatisfactorily intermixed with the propagandistic efforts of large institutions. The commentary on inadequate artistic vision often seems quarrelsome and petty. The large institutions, like the military and corporations, are not analyzed in any systematic manner for their effects on imagination. Political parties, public education, and the labor movement do not appear in the book. The working class is non existent. It's not certain that, in the end, the "why" of not thinking is adequately addressed. And the book has no index, which is important because of the myriad of names mentioned. I would say this is a niche book. For general commentary on the impact of powerful institutions on society, better books could be found. Insiders of cultural and artistic criticism may find something here to like or contest.
Rating: Summary: "A socialized imagination requires justice" Review: This book is about the social function of art, creativity, the imagination, esthetics, the sublime, or more accurately a concept of the author's own which those ideas merely point towards. This book does not lay out everything in plain terms the way for example Chomsky does (brilliantly and accurately I think; but precisely because of that simplicity of terms he is not able to address anything more complex than a few basic issues of morality). By contrast, Curtis White demands more of the reader. You should come to this book having done some thinking and reading on the subject, or else you are liable to dismiss his linkages between ideas as arbitrary or pretentious, which they most certainly aren't. His skill is in explaining precisely why "good" art is vital to the healthy functioning of society. If you can identify with the works he cites, it certainly makes it easier to understand what he is trying to say, but he is by no means suggesting a canon of works that others should value, that is precisely the OPPOSITE of his argument. He is saying that BOTH sides of the political spectrum (and perhaps especially those who would claim no strong politics) have been drawn into a flattening of distinction that destroys the purpose of art. If that sentence makes you think about the functioning of capitalism or the esthetics of the postmodern then you are in the audience for this book. Curtis White offers the most to someone who understands current academic-speak (and even values it as an accurate way to dissect culture) but still feels there is something important missing. Namely, the pleasure of experiencing and creating art that challenges one's perceptions of the world through the strength of its imagination. This imagination, by it's very nature, can only work against that which denies people their individual and collective freedoms.
Rating: Summary: Forget Reviews - Read It Yourself Review: Those reviews they got up here so far show exactly what Curtis White is criticizing. In that sense they are pretty much useless. Curtis White's position is neither liberal not conservative. Anybody who claims that White is liberal or conservative has simply missed the main point of the book. White is attacking NPR and Dinesh D'Souza, Cultural Studies and Steven Spielberg. The real point of the book is how one can possibly go beyond the stifling lack of imagination - which manifests itself so clearly in those almost petrified structures you run across every day - including the reviews here. If you're willing to throw some of those convictions you got over board and try to see things not from left or right but from somewhere else go and read the book. If you're caught in the liberal-right wing scheme and you prefer to read somebody you can agree with save your money.
Rating: Summary: a royal prankster sputing cheap pennyless acadmia Review: what can one expect from another literary critic except the self-inflation of oneself with large words full or nothingness and experience that resorts to shallow if any experience (see the boring book tv diatribe on cspan2 -11.24.2003) as he carefully dodges questions in some unmasterful measure. a continual examination in which nothingness (not in the sartrean sense) is exactly that. stick to the pros - chomsky or any philosopher worth his cred. postured and a wase of any ligitimate time.
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