Bad Or, the Dumbing of America [Paperback]

Paul Fussell (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1992

With characteristic wit, Fussell zeroes in on the decline of good taste in America. Bad is a hilarious look at how Americans can be persuaded that almost anything that's bad is good. With hints on how to recognize just what's BAD these days, Fussell provides an amusing and illuminating look at the current state of taste in America.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

With deadly wit and a nose for fakery, Fussell takes aim at the bad, things promoted as highly desirable that are in fact trivial; his targets are arrayed in A-to-Z format, each dispensed with a single mini-essay.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

From Fussell, a great crying out at just about everything that's awful about today's America. Bad things have always been around--cheap, false, deceitful; but when, as in our deluded ``age of hype,'' these things are not just swallowed whole but are declared to be ``better than any other sort,'' then ``bad'' is raised to ``BAD,'' otherwise understood as the culture-wide ``manipulation of fools by knaves'' that makes up the reality of our everyday experience in a nation that's insecure, ``subadult,'' and ``intellectually deprived.'' Fussell (Wartime, 1989, etc.) chronicles the shabby charade that comprises life in America, organizing his laments into a bitterly hilarious reference book with entries from ``BAD Advertising'' through ``BAD Television,'' with stops in between, for example, at airlines, beliefs, conversation, engineering, language, people, poetry, and even restaurants. The key idea throughout is that what determines true ``BAD'' is ``the distance between appearance and reality,'' and what Fussell is really decrying is the class insecurity, the ``doltishness and provincialism,'' that causes Americans to love the third-rate and to have not a clue as to the genuine. ``BAD Colleges and Universities'' may be the central entry in the whole, since wholesale and happily complacent ignorance lies at the heart of the horror. Out-Menckening Mencken in his silver-tongued diatribes at bunkum and pretense and fraud, Fussell slips sometimes into mere disgust, or worse, into plain insensitivity (West Virginia is a place where the waitresses ``will have no teeth''); but in declaring America to be a clownish nation empowered today only by ``a conspiracy against actuality,'' he addresses what might just be the awful truth about the last rotting timber our house stands on. With droll and despondently elegant wit, a study of the manipulated ignorance of our mass culture, and a dirge for the ``wiping-out of the amenity and nuance and complexity and charm that make a country worth living in.'' Domestic--and invaluable- -Fussell. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 201 pages
• Publisher: Touchstone Books (October 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0671792288
• ISBN-13: 978-0671792282
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (30 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #718,899 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

56 of 58 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Only for unapologetic elitists, June 29, 2004

By 

Lleu Christopher "www.liminalworlds.com" (Hudson Valley, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Bad Or, the Dumbing of America (Paperback)

This book contains enough good points and valuable criticism of modern American culture that it's a shame that it's value is marred by flaws and excessive generalizing. Paul Fussell also wrote Class, a very funny and witty analysis of the supposedly nonexistent American class structure. In Bad, Fussell invents a whole new category: "BAD" --all capitals-- is distinguished from the merely "bad." In the latter category are things from which we don't expect much. BAD, on the other hand, applies to people, objects, ideas and actions that are phony and pretentious.

Many of Fussell's points are well taken and hard to argue with. The focus of modern "higher" education on athletics at the expense of academics; the silly pretensions of "gourmet" restaurants; the lack of intelligence displayed in blockbuster movies; the incoherent babble of much contemporary language...there is a lot to recommend here. The problem is, Fussell gets carried away and ends up undermining his own argument by equating BAD with whatever doesn't conform to his own tastes and idiosyncrasies. In the chapter on architecture, for example, he is contemptuous of almost anything built in the last fifty years without any real basis other than personal taste. Again, his often valid critique of modern language (e.g. euphemisms, corporate jargon and overly complex signs) ends up getting diluted by his picayune insistence on perfect grammar, even in poetry (I can agree that most of the poems he quotes are BAD, but to say that poetry must be grammatical is silly). Fussell's opinions on music border on the bizarre. Wagner, Leonard Bernstein, Andrew Lloyd Webber, along with all reggae music are, we are informed, all BAD, while Beethoven and Brahms are dismissed as "B" composers. It is remarks like these that detract from the book's general thesis.

He takes many potshots at whole cities and regions, which ends up making him sound like just another urban elitist who looks down on anyone who doesn't live on one of the coasts. Finally (at least for the purposes of this review), his critique of "BAD beliefs" is so inclusive as to leave me wondering what he thinks it's good to believe in. He thoroughly despises anything new age but he also gets in his digs against religious fundamentalists and materialism. What does that leave? I'm afraid Fussell takes refuge in the kind of highbrow skepticism that mocks whatever isn't sanctioned by the so-called experts.

Many of Fussell's observations in BAD are important ones and go to the heart of what's wrong with today's culture. The ubiquity of mindless pop culture, sports and advertising and the overall anti-intellectual climate is something to be truly concerned about. Unfortunately, he couldn't resist throwing too wide a net and including many things that aren't so bad. This book comes very close at times to being an example of what it is criticizing. If you are going to equate BAD with snobby and pretentious, it's best not to come across as too much of a snob yourself. All in all, not a BAD book, but not quite GOOD either.

19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Should be Required Reading in High School, March 19, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Bad Or, the Dumbing of America (Hardcover)

For me, this book had one especially redeeming quality among its many - No longer could I consider myself the grouchiest grouch on the planet.

By cutting through our phony pomposity and inability to recognize quality, Fussell exposes our us as a nation of shallow, self-congratulating losers who believe that it is alright to delude ourselves into believing we are something we are not. Specifically, deep thinking, conscientious citizens.

To take something that is merely bad, and by promotion and hyperbole, convince the public that it is not bad, but good and even better than all the rest - we then achieve BAD. From movies to books to ideas to ostentatious restaurants and all the rest. Personally, I loved his skewering rant of the soapy Andrew Lloyd Webber, who, along with Mickey Mouse are my personal poster twins for the Dumbing of America. And if Fussell ridiculed the elections of Ronald Regan and George H. Bush, one can only wonder what the temperment of the book might be if it were being written today.

Since this book was published, much more BAD has crept into our lives. From overbearing and attention needing cell phone abusers to major market quick read newspapers that make USA Today seem almost journalstic, our addiction to BAD behavior and kitsch make us considerably more transparent than we were when the book was published in 1991.

I have enjoyed some of the reader comments in this section. Especially the comments from those who are offended by the fact that Fussell has challenged the ideas with which they have been branded. Their offense comes not at the fact that their institutions have been attacked, but that they have been duped into believing that these very institutions were necessary, important and relevent.

On the downside, the book ended simply as a criticism, without relief. Unlike Steve Allen's "Dumbth," where dozens of suggestions for improvement are offered from one of the most thoughful minds of the century, B.A.D. sheds precious little light in the direction of redemption. The book could have used a few more chapters pointing the way. Nonetheless, I highly recommend this book to parents, teachers, students and to anyone in our society who believes that a college degree is a synonym for education, or that walking around the mall is the epitomy of cultural achievement.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An intelligent, witty, often scathing commentary on society, November 15, 1996

By A Customer

This review is from: Bad Or, the Dumbing of America (Paperback)

This book is an insightful, tongue-in-cheek look at American society. Fussell argues that American culture elevates many tacky, tasteless or outright dumb phenomenon to the level of "BAD" by promoting them as elegant, luxurious, intelligent or otherwise desirable. The author examines many realms in which this occurs, including advertising, airlines, banks, hotels (the mint on the pillow phenomenon does not go unscrutinized), books, poetry, beliefs and ideas. BAD... or, the Dumbing of America is a delightful book, full of sardonic wit and astute observations