Customer Reviews

Zombification: Stories from National Public Radio

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
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Andrei Codrescu manages to say so much,yet keeps the book moving quickly. The anecdotes and observations, obviously personal to Codrescu, each hold some universal truth. His style is a strong complement to our ever shortening attention spans. Briskly paced, sharp and funny; once you begin reading, you will find the book difficult to put down.

Andrei Codrescu writes essays for National Public Radio. He emigrated to the United States from Communist Romania. His appreciation of European and American culture is evident in his writings.

Mr. Codrescu defines zombification as indifference to suffering caused by overexposure to the media. Our television sets are portals that harden our hearts and deaden our nerves to the plight of the poor, the persecuted, and the dying. We relate to other people as shadowy images rather than as real people. Andrei Codrescu's message is serious, but he discusses these issues in an entertaining manner.

Examples of Mr. Codrescu's essays include 'Escape from Politics' ("the Republican National Convention. It's the kingdom of the Overambitious."); 'Riots' (after witnessing the 1967 Detroit riots "Gangs have stepped into the vacuum left by suppression of radical politics."); 'Advice to the New Chief: Inauguration Day, 1993' ("Be sure to carry a tool kit with you at all times. In the next years everything is going to fall apart."); and 'Soviet Maps: Reality and Its Next of Kin' (Repressed people "have learned to navigate by their stomachs: that's one infallible compass.")

Andrei Codrescu's essays are well-crafted and entertaining. One rereads them for their societal insight. Mr. Codrescu observes much, says much, and leaves additional clues for the reader.

Andrei Codrescu, a Romanian immigrant and English professor, writes essays for National Public Radio. His essays demonstrate his appreciation of European and American culture.

Mr. Codrescu defines zombification as indifference caused by overexposure to suffering. Our television sets are portals that harden our hearts and deaden our nerves to the plight of the poor, the persecuted, and the dying. We relate to other people as shadowy images rather than as real people. Andrei Codrescu's observations are serious, but he discusses them in an entertaining manner.

Examples of Mr. Codrescu's observations include: (after witnessing the 1967 Detroit riots) "Gangs have stepped into the vacuum left by suppression of radical politics."; (to the President) "Be sure to carry a tool kit with you at all times. In the next years everything is going to fall apart."; and (cynical people) "have learned to navigate by their stomachs: that's one infallible compass."

Professor Codrescu's essays are well-crafted, entertaining, and merit rereading for their societal insight.

Andrei Codrescu has become a legend, a sacred institution and an imperative in our times. His NPR vignettes are like mini hand grenades thrown under our cultural bus reeling through the 21st Century: His is a "whip lash back to reality" disguised as an innocent tonic for our troubled times. But like a "hot buttered knife," he cuts to the chase, and through the fog of the lethal ignorance that our troubled cultural times represent.

Being a teacher of English and a Creative Writer, Codrescu's work is "high" rather than "low" art, and thus, he gains a kind of immunity to go about his job methodically, deftly, quickly, and so efficiently that he is long gone to the next devastating critique before we know what has really hit us: And when we finally realize the full import of his comments, our "oversized cultural head" has been completely severed from its "pygmy body." [There is a profound lesson in this for all potential critics of American culture.]

It reminds me of one of Richard Pryor's jokes: When the Judge metes out a harsh 40-year sentence to a repeat drug offender for again showing up "high" in his courtroom, the addict says as he is being dragged off to his cell, "Thank you, your honor!" As the cliché goes, when Cordrescu tells us to "go to hell," we actually pack a lunch and look forward to the trip. His artful witticisms are the "final reality check" on our collective insanity as our cultural bus reels around a curve that the reckless drivers of our maximally bifurcated political system will surely be unable to negotiate.

Thus the real art of Codrescu's witticisms and vignettes lie in the fact that he uncovers and exposes to us in the starkest of terms, all of the lethal ignorance that we accept as normal. And then lays it before us in such a way that we have no "comeback." Unlike normal polemics, where we can again cover up the criticisms in a blanket of "why he is wrong about us" -- by arguing the merits and demerits, fine points, subtleties and nuances, ad infinitum. With Codrescu's witticisms, once the trap door is released there are no comebacks: we are on our way down to the bottom of the shaft, period, no second chances; no if, ands or buts: case closed. Only after he has meted out the collective sentence for things that we consider normal, do we then realize that these are indeed things that "truly normal" people are hanged for. Ten stars