Symptoms of Culture [Hardcover]

Marjorie Garber (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0415918596 | ISBN-13: 978-0415918596 | Publication Date: April 8, 1998 | Edition: 1

The symptoms of culture are the anxieties that underlie modern life: the instability of gender roles, the mysteries of female sexuality, the enigma of authority, the desire for greatness in ourselves and our heroes. From concern over fake orgasms to our worries about Great Books reading lists, from wanting God on our side at sports contests to wanting Shakespeare on our side whenever we want to sound important, we are a walking case of symptoms. Whatever the modern illness may be, the doctor locates the symptoms in a box of Jello or in Charlotte's marvelous web, on the football field or in the bedroom, in our great Mr. Shakespeare, in our classroom or the courtroom, or in a sneeze.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Culture is all around us: television, video games, Shakespeare, advertisements, books, musical recordings, news reports, even the packaging of food items. The pervasiveness of culture, however, is matched by the pervasiveness of anxiety about our position in it: Who are we? What are we? According to Marjorie Garber, one of America's most astute and imaginative social commentators, culture and anxiety are so intertwined as to be inseparable.

We are, Garber argues, what we consume culturally--even if it doesn't always agree with us. Garber's approach to culture is eclectic: she veers from Charlotte's Web to Jell-O boxes, from Sir Laurence Olivier's bisexuality to the Anita Hill/Clarence Thomas hearings. Yet her aim remains unwavering throughout. Far more interested in what a piece of culture "means" than in discussing "good" and "bad" culture, she sifts and sorts through the artifacts of everyday life attempting to find meaning and sense in the midst of chaos.

Garber's greatest source of strength as a critic, however, is her acknowledgment that "culture" is so multifaceted and meaningful that her efforts are ultimately, by intention and necessity, tentative and elusive. Full explanations would only serve to destroy culture's fun and energy. With grace and humor, Symptoms of Culture takes an insightful, invigorating look at the amazingly complicated thing we call "culture" and explains it all--well, not quite all--to us. --Michael Bronski

Review

"A master at reading the mass-cultural sign, . . . Garber glides effortlessly from a chapter on greatness to one on Jello-O. . . . In her ability to move from High Culture to pop culture, from media representations of the Scopes trial to the implications of the second-best bed from the Renaissance to the White House." -- Bookforum

"By far the most thought-provoking book....every essay makes astute, unexpected critiques of modern life. Garber looks not to symbols but rather to symptoms, which offer "in the specificity and oddity of the particular a clue to fantasies of the universal, the general, the eternal- all of which...are mad possible by the omission or suppression of context"." -- Recent Studies in Tudor and Stuart Drama - Spring 1999

"Garber's analysis of culture is probing and precise; it seeks to uncover hidden etiologies and make startling connections. She is a master diagnostician, a relentless observer of surface phenomena--movies, food products, children's books--that manifest deeper maladies. . . . Garber's writing is doubly dreamy, both oneiric and gorgeous." -- The Globe and Mail - July 1998

"With pointed observations and wit, Garver touches on football and its connection to Christianity, video games, our fascination with roman numerals and Shakespeare..." -- Star Tribune, Minneapolis

"goes off like a depth charge." -- Atlantic Unbound

Symptoms of Culture doesn't offer much intellectual stimulation, once you figure out that Garber jumps hither and yon only to end up in the same place. But the pieces can be educational. A dogged researcher, Garber offers up lots of intriguing tidbits of information.... -- The Boston Globe, Bill Marx

Symptoms of Culture is tantalizing, amusing, learned and frustrating. At a number of points one has the sense of being in a maze and encountering certain culturally loaded terms--greatness, Jewishness, Shakespeare, and even the letters C, M and O--over and over again. -- The New York Times, Sarah Boxer

Much of the analysis is witty; Symptoms of Culture contains some engaging juxtapositions of historical events and ideas. What it lacks, however, is a coherent point of view or principle. Shouldn't symptoms indicate a disease? -- The Nation, Gay Wachman

[I]n Symptoms of Culture she has no theme, and does not want one.... In this case, the result threatens to be an army of symptoms in search of a disease--about as good an organizing principle as a collection of musical variations without a theme. And yet, like a frustrating but fascinating hypochondriac, Garber describes her symptoms so engagingly that we don't mind the lack of diagnosis, hoping that they may in the end, as she suggests, "add up to a syndrome." Whether or not they add up to a syndrome, they do add up to, on the whole, a fine group of eclectic essays. -- The New York Times Book Review, Liesl Schillinger

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Routledge; 1 edition (April 8, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0415918596
• ISBN-13: 978-0415918596
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,788,277 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars May or may not be your cup of tea, April 13, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Symptoms of Culture (Paperback)

I suspect this book might be hit and miss. I found it to be beyond brilliant: witty, erudite, well-researched, and playful, Garber writes the perfect antidote to scholarly conservatism, traditionalism, and stuffiness. The first essay, "Greatness," is a free-associating tour de force that not only perfectly puts her theoretical framework to work (go Freud!), but also reminds us that even those who argue against "ideology" and "politics" work through and with them, whether or not (and especially if they don't) acknowledge it. People who are still comfortably attached to orthodox scholarly beliefs will find this book to be too eccentric and perhaps even evil; the Lynne Cheneys and Camille Paglias of the world must burst into flames at the mere mention of Garber's name. Even those who agree with Garber's politics might find her method of analysis too labyrinthine and airy. I found the method refreshing. (And at least she warns us of it in the beginning.) Overall, the book reminds us that the methods of close reading and the psychoanalytic interpretation of dreams can (and must) be applied to the world around us, reminds us of the importance of reading against the grain, reading between the lines, always questioning and critiquing that which society presents to us as given, inherent, assumed, decontextualized, "real" and "great."

12 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars PC Bigotry at its most arbitrary, June 29, 2001

By 

John B. Carpenter (Yanceyville, NC) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Symptoms of Culture (Hardcover)

I was required to read this book for a graduate course. As a symptom of what is wrong with American (and Western) culture, it does a good job of exemplifying the absurdity and bigotry of the psuedo-intellectual left. If one approaches it as a scholarly appraisal of Western culture, one will be seriously mis-led.

Garber assumes, in the introduction, that Fruedianism is an authoritative hermeneutical tool for literature and culture generally. One would normally expect a scholar to demonstrate why s/he believes in a certain system of ideas. But apparently Garber approaches Frued the same way a fundamentalist approaches the Bible: Freud said it, I believe it, that settles it. That abitrary approach permeates the entire book -- confirming the worst of what one has heard about the debased (and intollerantly leftist) nature of today's English departments. Later she appeals for tolerance for Jews wearing their caps during sporting events and damns evangelical Christians for praying in public after they score touch-downs. Guess what? She's Jewish. Shakespeare, she says, is a "fetish" and "Charlotte's Web" is a work of comparable literary value. And on and on she goes. This book should be preserved if only to demonstrate how intolerant and debased the academic "left" became in the late 20th century.