The Pyrotechnic Insanitarium : American Culture on the Brink [Hardcover]

Mark Dery (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 1999

A wild, sophisticated ride through "fin-de-millennium" America by the author of the critically acclaimed "Escape Velocity".

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Centering his critique of the contemporary pop cultural landscape around the title image, borrowed from a sobriquet once applied to Coney Island, Dery sees "a giddy whirl of euphoric horror where cartoon and nightmare melt into one." He can be an astute observer of trends, adept at connecting seemingly disparate phenomena. The best essays here focus on our obsessions with conspiracy and paranoia, the new grotesque aesthetic in the arts and the changing dynamics of technophilia and technophobia in the new computer age. Unfortunately, the book is padded with writing on minor topics. Dery shifts focus rather too quickly?one has the sense that he is throwing ideas at a wall ostensibly to see what sticks, but really hoping to distract attention from the results through the speed of his performance. And, too often, he filters his subject matter through suppositions plucked from high theory without examining the ideas he's borrowing, perhaps least successfully in his deployment of Georges Bataille to unravel the cultural import of Jim Carrey. Some inconsistencies stick out: at one point, he characterizes deconstruction as a "vogue," barely above the level of a conspiracy theory; at another, he concludes his analysis of freaks as culturally "other" with one of the hoariest of deconstructionist chestnuts, the condemnation of binary oppositions. Such jargon limits his writing, and makes the book feel dated, as his reliance on interpretive strategies left over from the '70s (particularly from French thought: Kristeva's abject, Baudrillard's postmodern, Deleuze and Guattari's schizophrenic) is stale even by the standards of academe.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Like many essays on pop culture of contemporary America, Dery's collection is an everything-including-the-kitchen-sink view of the end of the millenium (including comparisons of the Warren Report to Finnegan's Wake, and the author's fascination with the Edvard Munch painting The Scream). Occasionally, Dery's ruminations on our Nike-obsessed, Jim Carrey-imitating, X-Files-paranoid culture are hilarious; at other times, they definitely are not. But his point is well taken, that as we approach the next century, the U.S. is more of a culturally aware, and thus more culturally consuming, country than ever before. The author's previous take on cyberspace, Escape Velocity, seeps in here as well: the information age pushes the bits and pieces of pop culture further in our faces every day. The title is an old term used to promote New York's Coney Island amusement park, and a more appropriate monicker for 1990s culture can't be found. With no war to distract us as in previous decades, the culture itself has become a focal point for societal anxiety, and Dery's insights into the whys of this upheaval are most illuminating. Joe Collins

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 295 pages
• Publisher: Grove Pr; 1st edition (February 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 080211640X
• ISBN-13: 978-0802116406
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,874,431 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I'm a cultural critic. My essay collection I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts: Drive-By Essays on American Dread, American Dreams, will be published in April 2012 by University of Minnesota Press. I'm at work on a biography of the writer and artist Edward Gorey, which will be published by Little, Brown in 2013. I wrote The Pyrotechnic Insanitarium: American Culture on the Brink (1999) and Escape Velocity: Cyberculture at the End of the Century (1996). I edited Flame Wars: The Discourse of Cyberculture (1994); in my contribution to that anthology, "Black to the Future," I coined the term "Afro-futurism," now a thriving academic genre. My 1993 essay "Culture Jamming: Hacking, Slashing, and Sniping in the Empire of the Signs" popularized the concept of "culture jamming."

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars America Dances on the Edge of the Abyss, May 19, 2000

By 

Jeffrey W. House (San Jose, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Pyrotechnic Insanitarium : American Culture on the Brink (Hardcover)

Dery's initial metaphor--Coney Island as controlled chaos, an irruption of social taboos--sets the theme for this collection of essays exploring the fin de millenium American turn toward the countercultural, the outcast, the obscene,the pacifying. Exploring the place of Disney, talk radio and television, technology, Heaven's Gate, the Unabomber, aberrant art, freak culture, carnival celebrations and other social expressions beyond the pale, Dery suggests that in the century since Coney, America continues to indulge the dark and the chaotic, but it does so now in tones suggesting resignation more than despair. Suggesting a dialectic reaction, Dery posits the angst of postmodern American as a response to the loss of meaning and control that pervades its society. Gated communities attempt to carve out islands of control amidst urban terror; Disney offers a world whose simplicity and comfort counter the misshapen reality about us; all the while underground art movements aggressively mock corporate values. And for good measure,Dery is a scintillating writer, tossing off well-turned phrases and allusions that both entertain and clarify. A stimulating compilation of writings.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Pyrotechnic Insanitarium, April 2, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Pyrotechnic Insanitarium: American Culture on the Brink (Paperback)

I heard Dery interivewed on KPFK in Los Angeles, and wondered if he was as gleefully subversive, jarringly insightful and downright hilarious in print. I wasn't disappointed! Imagine a brains-sloshing rollercoaster ride where your IQ is ten points higher--rather than lower--when you disembark. That's what you're in for.

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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A perfect view of millenial America, October 5, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Pyrotechnic Insanitarium : American Culture on the Brink (Hardcover)

I found that this book captured near perfectly the sense of hyper-reality and unease that grips our civilization at the close of the millenium. With a series of at-first seemingly disconnected images, Dery weaves together a coherent and prismatic image of what America means in an age when meaning is equated with mere image. This is an author who is a journalist in the highest sense of the word, bringing the reader to a fresh understanding of the common everyday world which surrounds us all.

I whole-heartedly recommend this work.