When the Kissing Had to Stop: Cult Studs, Khmer Newts, Langley Spooks, Techno-Greeks, Video Drones, Author Gods, Serial Killers, Vampire Media, Allen Sperm-Suckers, Satanic therapi [Hardcover]

John Leonard (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1, 1999

One of our most sophisticated commentators looks at contemporary literature and pop culture. Leading literary critic John Leonard is a master at decoding the fears and longings that animate our popular culture. When the Kissing Had to Stop is Leonard at his best, with his reflections on the best new literature of today and what it can tell us about America now. The conspiracies and fears fostered by the Cold War continue to poison our national psyche. New enemies, real or imagined, have fostered subcultures of fantasy and paranoia, and vertiginous proclamations of doom and transformation. In this brilliant new book, Leonard shows how our great novelists and essayists can help us to find some sense and sanity amid the dull roar of tabloids, talk shows, and the Disneyfication of everything.

Writers discussed include:
Don DeLillo
Joan Didion
Eduardo Galeano
Doris Lessing
Gabriel Grcia Marquez
Toni Morrison
Thomas Pynchon
Edward Said

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

When John Leonard says he's going to "use a nifty novel, Philip Kerr's A Philosophical Investigation, as an excuse to talk about everything else under the fascistic sun," he means it, as a review of a futuristic thriller turns into a grand tour of modern culture, with stops to look at (among other things) the history of serial killers, Weimar Germany, E.O. Wilson's theories of sociobiology, the life of Ludwig Wittgenstein, the roots of psychoanalysis, a 4th-century woman mathematician, and Copenhagen's paltry commemoration of Soren Kierkegaard. In these essays, gathered from various publications (mostly The Nation), Leonard takes on everything from Toni Morrison to the X-Files movie in freewheeling, energetic style. Reading cultural criticism hasn't been this much fun since Lester Bangs was on the scene. When the Kissing Had to Stop is probably best suited for periodic dipping rather than a straight-through reading, because it is possible to overdose on the massive amounts of cultural literacy crammed into Leonard's prose. But who could resist the rough charms of a man who notes, in the middle of reviewing Bret Easton Ellis, "I read this stuff so you don't have to"? --Ron Hogan

From Publishers Weekly

A weekly commentator on CBS Sunday Morning and a former editor of the New York Times Book Review, Leonard (Smoke and Mirrors) has distinguished himself as a cultural critic over the past two decades with his unabashedly liberal, even leftist, views. His eighth book is a collection of 30 essays, many of them expanded since their original publications in such journals as the Nation and the New York Review of Books. Part of Leonard's ongoing critique of contemporary U.S. electronic and print media, the pieces range from "Lolita Lights Our Fire," a review of Adrian Lyne's film of Nabokov's most notorious novel, to an evaluation of government funding and the arts in "Whose Television, for Which Public?" Leonard is terrific at describing and explaining everything from The X-Files to the current politics of smoking. As a materialist, he locates the roots of current culture in political and economic realities, not any vague millennialism. While his ruminations cut a wide swath, he never strays from his basic theme that post-Cold War America has been overwhelmed and undercut by deeply ingrained paranoia, as well as by a sense of incipient doom. He offers no concrete or radical solutions but hints that a better world beckons in the writings of such artists as Grace Paley, Doris Lessing and Toni Morrison. Often ecstatically urgent, these pieces are highly informed and cogently argued.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 362 pages
• Publisher: New Press, The; 1St Edition edition (June 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1565845331
• ISBN-13: 978-1565845336
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 5.8 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,812,194 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant, June 28, 1999

By 

M. Lynch (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: When the Kissing Had to Stop: Cult Studs, Khmer Newts, Langley Spooks, Techno-Greeks, Video Drones, Author Gods, Serial Killers, Vampire Media, Allen Sperm-Suckers, Satanic therapi (Hardcover)

John Leonard has been making me get up early on Sunday mornings so that I may watch his reviews of T.V. and media on CBS's "Sunday Morning". From those early morning encounters, I was prepared for the pacing and precision of his sentences. But now, after sampling this fine collection of essays, what a pleasure it is to savor his words on the page, like hard candy.

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars enlightening yet humbling read, August 15, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: When the Kissing Had to Stop: Cult Studs, Khmer Newts, Langley Spooks, Techno-Greeks, Video Drones, Author Gods, Serial Killers, Vampire Media, Allen Sperm-Suckers, Satanic therapi (Hardcover)

I found this book to be one of the more unusual things I've ever read. It had multiple personalities; Entertaining, Enlightening, Humbling, Compelling, Strange, Compelling, and I'm sure I'm missing a few. The vocabulary is unbelievable. Don't touch this book without a dictionary in-hand. However, the writing is captivating. It alone is worth the price of reading about writers and works you've never heard of, with attendant feelings of functional illiteracy. I put this book down often. But, I always picked it back up. It was a unique read.

13 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Genius, December 28, 2000

By 

Matthew Cheney (New Hampton, NH USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: When the Kissing Had to Stop: Cult Studs, Khmer Newts, Langley Spooks, Techno-Geeks, Video Drones, Author Gods, Serial Killers, Vampire Media, Alien Sperm-Suckers, Satanic Therapists, and Those of Us Who Hold a Left-Wing Grudge in the Post Toasties New World Hip-Hop (Paperback)

It's not a word I use lightly, but there's no better way to describe John Leonard than to say he's a genius. He certainly won't appeal to everyone's taste, but if you like essays written by a man whose mind ranges over the whole course of human history and knowledge, and who isn't afraid to bring all that knowledge together in a single sentence, then here's the guy for you. Not only is he a genius, but he's also terribly witty, and you don't get that from a lot of geniuses.

But you won't like Leonard if all you want from an essay about a book is an answer to the question, "Should I read it?" or if you are a fan of such folks as Newt Gingrich, Ronald Reagan, or Attila the Hun. (But don't think Leonard's leftism is knee-jerk; there's a wonderful essay in here about smoking, in which he confesses, "I stick burning leaves in my foodhole," and goes on to explore his life as a social pariah among all of his purer-than-thou lefty friends.)

Every page herein is suffused with a stunning literacy, and Leonard drops titles the way most of us shed skin. I would love to spy on him for a day, because I don't know how he has crammed so much knowledge into himself. He writes brilliantly about the whole history of cyberpunk, then goes on to fine surveys of African literature, Israeli literature, and everything that ever hit a page in the USA. But Leonard knows more than books, for he seems to have seen at least one episode of every television show ever created and made it to all of the major movies of the past fifty years or so. He's got a good grasp of American political history, and he seems to have some sort of social life. He's even got time for AA meetings.

I don't know how he does it, but thank whatever deity you can imagine for him. He's a wizard with words, an encyclopedia of everything, but more than that he's got vision, scruples, morality. And he wants to find the same in other people. He writes, "I like to be reminded that once there were writers for whom the convulsions of our time were a revelation, an insult or a wound, instead of a thesis topic cross-linked in a Nexis search to syndicate a rant."

Sure, Leonard's references sometimes cross themselves into a feedback loop, and he's got a love of paragraph-long lists, and he has a tendency to recycle himself from previous books and articles (having read all of Leonard's collections of essays over the years, I've heard that satire means "never having to say you're sorry", as does arch-conservatism, while standard liberalism means "always having to say you're sorry", but the phrase is so great I don't mind Leonard's apparent determination to keep it in perpetual print). His indulgences and habits are a part of his charm, and I wouldn't want him to lose any of it. There is not and has never been a critic like John Leonard -- perhaps there has never even been any sort of writer like him. But I haven't read quite enough to speak authoritatively on every writer who ever lived; Leonard has, though, so I'll defer to him.