Customer Reviews

The Middle Mind: Why Americans Don't Think for Themselves

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(5)
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2 star:		(11)
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Despite its flaws (which many other reviewers were quick to spot), I found The Middle Mind to be a refreshing look at the bland mediocrity of contemporary American culture. This book may be better appreciated as a collection of essays (which, to a large extent, it is: some of the material has already been published in Harper's) than a book with a unified theme. If you judge it by its title and expect a focused discussion of the middle mind you will be disappointed. If you take each chapter on its own merits, however, you can admire the style, scope and originality of Curtis White's writing.

The middle mind is that superficial, politically correct, nonthreatening cultural terrain that is all around us today. It is, as White tells us, prevalent in the media (especially the supposedly liberal media such as NPR), academia and politics. To the right of the middle mind are the cultural conservatives who want to turn back the clock to a mythic America of the past; to the left are the "tenured radicals" whose criticism of society seldom reaches beyond the university. Steven Spielberg (whose Saving Private Ryan is methodically criticized; White does a good job in exposing it as a simplistic, anachronistic piece of pro-war propaganda), Charlie Rose and NPR's Terry Gross are given as examples of the middle mind in action. I am not familiar with the latter two, but White portrays them as pseudo-serious talk shows full of celebrity gossip.

There are a couple of problems with this book. One is the insufficient attention given to the central topic of the middle mind itself. White gives some good examples of it, but never really pins down the middle mind and its relationship to the extremes. Another, related problem is that White, especially in the last few chapters, get bogged down in a complicated technical discussion of metaphysics which, if I understand it correctly, undercuts the book's premise to some degree. For one thing, these highly theoretical arguments are the very kind that the aforementioned tenured radicals are so fond of. White discusses the theories of Derrida and Hegel. Derrida was a postmodernist who helped to start the trend of "deconstruction" so hated by conservatives like Harold Bloom. Hegel was, among other things, the philosopher who used the device known as dialectic. Although White doesn't get into this, dialectic --with its thesis, antithesis and synthesis-- is closely related to the problem of the middle mind. I'm not saying Hegel was an advocate of White's middle mind, but if you are going to bring in Hegel's extremely complex thinking, you should at least address the part of his philosophy that most closely relates to your topic. As for Derrida and postmodernism, White first seems to imply that they are part of the academic tendency to fall prey to the middle mind. But then, in the later chapters, he returns to Derrida and tries to use him to further his argument. I found White's final chapter, in which he advocates a culture that embraces the imagination, admirable in its intent but a little too abstract to be convincing.

The limitations of this book do not take away from its value. White is an intelligent and entertaining writer; his style ranges from serious to cantankerous to tongue-in-cheek. I agreed with most of his criticisms; where I found him lacking were in his attempts to suggest positive alternatives. Yet the book's main focus is one of criticizing the status quo, and there is much value in that. His approach is non-dogmatic, so we can forgive him for not entirely succeeding in giving us the Final Answer to the problem of the middle mind. This is the kind of book that can stir readers out of intellectual complacency and remind them that creativity and the imagination lie outside the boundaries of today's pop culture.

As other readers have commented, White does a poor job of giving a precise meaning to "the middle mind," and he actually fails to tell us why Americans don't think for themselves. He gives plenty of examples of Americans not thinking for themselves, but provides little in the way of explanation.

Nonetheless, a prescription, and a valuable one, can be abstracted from this rather scattered and wide-ranging work of social criticism: let us critically examine our cultural, political, aesthetic and social worlds with an eye to the possible alternatives and open possibilities. White performs evocative readings of disparate social artifacts, ranging from Saving Private Ryan, The Accidental Buddhist, and Radiohead's music to political efforts co-opt "stupid smart" gen-Xers for business revitalization. Some of these readings miss the mark while others are quite perceptive; I suspect every reader will find occasion to agree and to disagree. I would suggest that far from attempting to feed us "correct" opinions, White is telegraphing a critical stance to the world whose absence he rightly deplores. By analogy, if this book were about the state of the culinary arts, it would not be a cookbook of tried-and-true recipes, but a call that we should challenge ourselves to discover the joy of cooking, with all the risk and mess it entails. Who knows what new culinary creations might come of it?

This is an extremely ambitious short work -- a book that ultimately points to a world of thought and engagement far beyond its own pages. Highly recommended.

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.

It's hard to dislike a book that skewers John Seabrook, not to mention Bloom, D'Sousa, and English Department faculty who think they are political scientists . . . but this is a difficult book to warm up to.

The problem is, I think, that it's poorly written. White bounces between little jokes, truncated academic arguments, and insightful observations about American society while the reader just holds on to his racing prose. It's more a rant than an argument. If I had been his editor, I would have said, "This is great, Curtis. It's good that you got this out of your system. NOW you can write an actual book about this subject."

I think I agree with his basic views, but his arguments wander off into fogs of compacted references and then are abruptly announced as completed: "Now, having finished with the left, I'll critique the right." Finished? Had you STARTED?

I think my biggest disappointment with the book is that very little of it is actually about the "middle mind" (after reading the book, try to sit down and write a one page essay distinguishing the middle from the lower and upper mind)and virtually none of it is about "why Americans don't think for themselves" (which is the book's subtitle).

I've been trying to think of people I could recommend this to (people who don't share the exact same educational background as White), and I can't think of anyone. I really don't know who the audience is for this . . . perhaps graduate students. I am going to use it in my class because I agree with his positions, but think analyzing his statements would be a great exercise in critical thinking.

I think the point of a book like this is that it could persuade people who don't already agree with his basic stance. And, in this, I think the book fails.

I, too, read the Harper's article that inspired this book, and though I was just as perplexed as Patrick O'Kelley by White's vilification of Terry Gross and "Fresh Air," White takes the time in this longer work to make his antipathy very clear. It is the dumbing-down and leveling of our boldest art with pap entertainment that infuriates him, and Gross, broadcasting on NPR, which should be insulated from the pressure for public pandering that so afflicts commercial radio and television, seems to do this on a regular basis. Other examples White advances to illustrate his points are idiocyncratic more often than not, but that doesn't detract a whit from one singular accomplishment of this book of particular interest to me. White is a novelist of a particularly creative and original stripe (the fact that I've read all his work must mean that I'm a fan), and this qualifies him to speak of something that few intellectuals have discussed with much accuracy, in my opinion: the identity and function, not only of imagination, but of the arts in society.

As an artist and sometime intellectual myself, I have despaired at how many writers on the subject have got it wrong. Happily, White takes Wallace Stevens as his mentor, and Stevens's pronouncements apply as well to visual and musical as to literary arts. But to be able to articulate with authority what art is, and does, one must have experienced it, fully and from the inside. Thus the greater part of White's discussion, I'm sure, comes from his own reflective experience as a novelist, and not only from reliance on the work of other authors and poets.

The middle section of the book, discussing in detail the military-industrial technocracy and where it is leading us, I read only dutifully; I have a hunch this subject has been discussed better elsewhere, and by insiders. And White's style, a mix of elegant, articulate discussion with conversational asides and profane expletives--something that energizes his novels--is a needless distraction here. But the Introduction, Chapters 1, 2, and 5 (of 5, all totaled) are brilliant, completely on-target, and worth the highest praise.

My only wish is that I could afford to send a copy of White's book to every critic, curator, gallery dealer and endowment administrator alive. For the "Middle Mind" lurks in palaces of power in the art world--where you might expect to find those who know better--as well as in government, corporate America, Big Media, and the general populace itself. Whether it always will is another question; but Step One is always to define the Problem, and it is done here with great insight.

It seems to me that Curtis White's engaging new book, "The Middle Mind," stands at least partly within the continuum that includes Mark Dery's book, "The Pyrotechnic Insanitarium: American Culture on the Brink," (Grove Press, 1999); Todd Gitlin's book, "Media Unlimited: How the Torrents of Images and Sounds Overwhelms Our Lives," (Henry Holt, 2001); and Thomas de Zengotita's essay "The Numbing of the American Mind," (Harper's Magazine, April 2002). Drawing broadly and expertly upon diverse sources from literature, art, film, technology, philosophy, and politics, Dr. White invites, and even implores us, to think and reflect critically upon the socially and politically orthodox metanarratives (overarching stories) that have come to characterize, define, and render largely insensate our present-day American life. He speaks of the commodification of dissent, of how we have become passive spectators (p. 99), and of our own unrecognized militarization (p. 102). Throughout his work, White draws explicit linkage among capitalism, technology, and militarism. He also delivers scalding criticism of current American foreign policy. Signficantly, White's call is for us to think--to imagine positive futures--as a pathway beyond our collective malady of "Middle Mind." Reading and thinking about this volume is well worth the investment of effort.

Robert S. Frey, Editor/Publisher
BRIDGES: An Interdisciplinary Journal
www.bridges23.com

I just finished Middle Mind and it is now riddled with my own notes, underlined passages and margin thoughts. It has been quite a while since a book arrested my attention quite like this. It is a rare find - a relevant topic brilliantly explored. I enjoyed White's arguments - loved his wit, his references(some brought me back to college...), and am delighted that so far, it has elicited such long responses from other readers. I can confidently recommend this to a broad audience of readers. Get it - it is great.

Many arguements here need to be made, heard widely, and considered deeply. The cultural criticism and telling 'take' on various writers is thought provoking even if the style is sometimes not as direct as it could be. He does a better job of reviewing authors who mislead and may not "think for themselves" clearly than thouroughly living up to the subtitle about "why Americans (generally?)don't think for themselves".

Because the situation is deteriorating rapidly with multimedia replacing thoughtful reading; job training replacing liberal education; professional business/law win-at-all-costs replacing most ethics and humanism; and language itself losing cogency the topics he essays are critical indeed. White also, as ome example, has the guts to tell us the impolite reality that we enjoy the fruits of materialism at the expense of many disadvantaged in the world - directly at their expense more than we think. (The American child's problem is often obesity and boredom and attention deficit syndrome when nearly half the world lives on less than $2 a day and children are malnourished. Fact not liberal softheadedness.)

A worthy effort worth revision; the Truths herein deserve it.

Reading "The Middle Mind" reminds me a bit of when I lived near a Univeristy of California campus and hung out with mostly PhD candidates. There would be moments of sheer brillance mixed in with a general soupy fog of academic lingo, rhetoric and, at times, arrogance.

Curtis White has a theory that makes a lot of sense. As a former director of a political non-profit charged with the task of mobilizing grassroots Americans I saw the "middle mind" at work on a daily basis. Very basic critiques of US governmental policy seemed incomprehensible to people who definitely had the intelligence to figure it all out. But many couldn't. Why? I think Curtis White has something here with this book. This is why I picked it up with such enthusiasm.

When you've got a great idea like White you're charged with two specific tasks. One, present the theory. Two, illustrate how this theory reflects reality by using specific examples.

It is in the examples that White gets bogged down.

I cheered when I read his critique of "Saving Private Ryan." Some of his arguments were the very same thoughts I had when I first saw the movie. The character of "Upham" the translator was a blatant attack on compassion, on intellectuals, and anything or anyone who doesn't follow the American way. Unfortunately, as White points out, very few people were able to "read" the movie and see these underlying messages.

Then White goes after college "Cultural Studies" programs. When you look at the book you get the idea that this is supposed by about why _most_ Americans have a middle mind. Concentrating on cultural studies reveals White's weak spot. He's an academic and, like many academics, he's been in his isolated world too much. As a lawyer once told me, "Don't worry, it's all a tempest in teapot." That describes perfectly the political turmoil on a lot of US college campuses. This is not to say that cultural studies hasn't had an impact. But to suggest that it deserves this much attention is just more ivory tower arrogance.

Another kind of mistake White makes is in picking less obvious targets like Terry Gross's "Fresh Air." Coming up with a theory can be a moment of genius. Going after an NPR radio personality who projects a smart and extremely pleasant demeanor is simply not a good way to endear potential believers in that theory. Even if White is correct about Gross, it's just not smart if you want people to actually believe in what you say. You turn them off because you've insulted someone they happen to think is a nice person.

Overall, I think White can't see the forest through the trees. The big picture here are the larger issues - politics, social movements, that sort of thing. A huge percentage of Americans have seen "Saving Private Ryan." That same huge percentage also tends to blindly support US foreign policy. There's a loose connection there and its important. Focusing on the micro culture of academic theory, however, has very little relation to the lives of everyday Americans. Any effect it has had is surely minimal.

If White had just stuck to more commonly shared American sources of information and culture such as "Saving Private Ryan" this book could have had a far more reaching impact.

I will give White credit, however, for being fairly impartial in aiming his criticisms. While he happens to like Zinn and Chomsky, he also attacks, for example, the New Age movement and political correctness. This is important because the middle mind, as I witnessed in my own experience working in politics, is not exclusive to a political ideology. Each side has certain weak spots. On the right you've got people who follow George W. Bush without question. On the other you've got leftists who blindly believe that Mumia Abu Jamal is as innocent as driven snow and anyone who says otherwise is a racist. Both mentalities depict a certain amount of intellectual laziness - a middle mind.

Overall, White has made the revolutionary act of describing the reality we live in. Americans don't think. How he went about doing this is a disappointing squandered opportunity.

I have mixed feeling about Curtis White's The Middle Mind. The book asserts that our society has evolved a mechanism for thwarting creativity and ensuring our continued passivity and stupidity. He stresses the importance of the examining the narratives we use to construct reality, and the importance of being able to imagine alternate stories. Narratives define our perception of reality, and our ability to recognize them as stories offers the freedom to rewrite them. He further asserts that big business and big government are controlling our collective stories, with some assistance from academia. White calls this controlling entity "the middle mind".

Curtis is clearly intelligent and well read. His writing, though pretentious, is clear and direct. These qualities, coupled with the fact that he presents a point of view that is different from my own, drew me to the book as I thumbed through it at [book retailer]. (Sorry, Amazon.) I particularly enjoyed the section on literary criticism. I know very little about the topic, but I was able to follow most of his explanations.

On many occasions, Curtis is derisive to those who disagree with him. Of course, that adds nothing to his arguments. I am disappointed when someone of his ability uses such tactics.

Curtis' arguments are weak in one important area: He fails to recognize his own liberal bias. I don't have a problem with bias; it's just another word for "point-of-view". But in logic, it's important to be aware of one's bias. Part of the liberal bias is that the world's problems are caused by social illnesses, and are corrected by improving social institutions. The corresponding conservative bias is that the world's problems are caused by individual human shortcomings, and are corrected when each of us strives to be a better person. Neither viewpoint is provable, nor are they mutually exclusive. Most of us predominantly accept one or the other axiomatically. Since Curtis argues that social institutions are corrupting our narratives, I think he should have at least addressed his liberal premises.

It's not that I disagree with Curtis' assessment of our society! On the whole, our education, our entertainment, our political debate, and our life-choices are just plain stupid. But I don't see that as the fault of our social instructions. The fault is our own. TV is moronic, but only because we choose to watch the moronic shows. Politicians feed us BS, but only because we are willing to eat it. And our insane love affair with the automobile and technology is of our own choosing. Our democratic and free enterprise social structures work very well. They give us what we want - good or bad. It's up to us to want the right things. The book would be served if Curtis explained precisely how insidious social forces prevent me from living my life with free choice, creativity, and intelligence.

Curtis also examines war and politics as a function of the stories we use to construct reality. His literary model is particularly effective when it cautions us against sanctifying our own motivations for war, or vilifying those of our enemies. Those are dangerous and unhelpful social scripts. But even on this topic, Curtis' unreflected liberal bias leaves a gap in his reasoning.

The liberal bias views war as the result of people becoming angry at one another. Avoiding war involves talking things through and generally treating each other better. The conservative bias views war as a power struggle between human societies. Avoiding war involves establishing a dominant power. (Though I think most of us acknowledge that both dynamics are at work.) Obviously, the liberal solution is preferable if it worked. The problem is that it never does.

The desire for peace is not new to our age. People have being trying to live together peacefully since the dawn of civilization. We have enjoyed extended periods of relative peace only when a dominant power enforced the peace - and always, sadly and paradoxically, through military might. Even our most enlightened and peace-loving leaders must contend with the fact that there are people out there willing to kill them to gain their power. As much as we would like it to be otherwise, violence exists because violence works. "The Middle Mind" offers nothing to address that conundrum. (Check out Nigel Ferguson's "Empire".)

I recommend "The Middle Mind" despite its logical flaws from a conservative perspective. Curtis writes very well, and has a playful intellect. I had to put on my thinking cap for this one.