Customer Reviews

Panic Encyclopedia: The Definitive Guide to the Postmodern Scene

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Postmodernist thought has its kernels of truth and insight, often afloat in a sea of verbiage only its writer may understand. Wouldn't some clear explanation of what is going on be refreshing? In this "Encyclopedia" one won't find discussions of ontology or deconstruction, however, but a loosely collected several dozen essays of mixed quality, ranging towards sickening. Very few are insightful, most are self-indulgently evasive, and some are infuriatingly fatuous. Nearly all will pick some notion read from a newspaper headline, a few minutes in front of the tube or a tabloid magazine, and then descend in cycles of increasingly tangled verbiage restating the same idea until the reader is completely frustrated. In few cases do the writers show actual understanding of their topic. The worst offender seems to be the editor himself, who is recognized even by dedicated postmodernists as one of their most mind-numbingly meaningless generators of confusing obfuscation. Many of the points he talks to death are cynical exploitation of postmodern themes, the kind of abuse that will drive it into the ground. He is an equal-opportunity ridiculer: trashing the innocent and unassuming along with the famous and pretentious. Few targets escape the splash of bile. It's enough to leave the reader feeling ill for days. This book has no significant insight, is uninteresting and barely understandable.

It is not even a good read.