On Paradise Drive: How We Live Now (And Always Have) in the Future Tense (Paperback)

~ (Author)
Key Phrases: cigar aficionado, democratic vistas, spiritual wind, United States, Patio Man, New York (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

For readers who are feeling glum about America and its place in the world, or those who despairingly look at our culture's cookie cutter, strip mall consumerism and flash-bang glitter, Brooks (Bobos in Paradise) offers a balm with his latest pseudo-sociological treatise. More a way to look at what he sees as America's problems (e.g., our thirst for enormous gas guzzlers and super-sized soft drinks) with optimism than a series of suggestions of how to fix them, this book by the New York Times op-ed columnist tells readers it's okay to consume, consume, consume-so long as they look toward the future while doing so. At times playful and sarcastic (though less funny than intended), the book jumps from statistical analysis to cultural observation to defense of Bush's foreign policy, all without much of a mooring in essential context or factual citation. This is deceptive optimism; one long essay insisting our society's problems are not so big, provided we talk about them in the right way. While engagingly written and insightful at points, Brooks's affirmation is unlikely to resound with anyone outside the conservative choir, and even less likely to spark change-or even a desire for change. Still, it's nice to feel loved-if not by the rest of the world, than at least by this author.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From The Washington Post

Four years ago, David Brooks published Bobos in Paradise, a captivating book about the convergence of bohemian and bourgeois cultures. The trend had been noted before. Indeed, an entire magazine, the Baffler, had been founded largely to decry it. But where the leftist Baffler savaged the hypocrisy of Baby Boomer capitalists who styled themselves counterculture rebels, Brooks, a conservative, invented an affectionate nickname for these bourgeois bohemians ("bobos"); lampooned them wittily but gently; and pronounced them harmless and in some ways actually beneficial to the common weal. This upbeat diagnosis made bobos feel better about themselves, and Brooks quickly became the right's ambassador to the liberal establishment. This past September, the New York Times formalized that role by giving him an op-ed column.

Brooks's new book, On Paradise Drive, has a more ambitious scope than Bobos in Paradise. This time, Brooks is examining all of America -- all of its middle class, anyway -- and he's reaching for a larger theme that will explain how its various subcultures relate to one another. Unfortunately, he never finds one.

That Brooks has not lost his penchant for bemused social taxonomy is amply demonstrated in the book's first chapter, which takes us on an imaginary drive that begins in a prototypical urban core. We travel from the downtown "urban hipster zone," characterized by "a stimulating mixture of low sexuality and high social concern," to the "crunchy" suburbs, where "all the sports teams are really bad, except those involving Frisbees." Then it's on to the pricier inner-ring suburbs, once inhabited by the Republican WASP elite but now taken over by the meritocratic elite, who babble at dinner parties about "the merits and demerits of Corian countertops." Farther on, we find the strip-mall-laden immigrant enclaves and, past these, the postwar suburbs that sometimes seem "shaped more by golf than by war or literature or philosophy." Finally, we reach our terminus at the "new exurbs" inhabited by Patio Man and Realtor Mom, who live in "a 3,200 square-foot middle-class home built to look like a 7,000 square-foot starter palace for the nouveaux riche." It's a beguiling trip, but where are we going?

In the next chapter, Brooks introduces the promising theme that class and cultural warfare never reach a boiling point because America's multiple tribes are only dimly aware of one another's existence. "There is no one single elite in America," Brooks explains. "Hence, there is no definable establishment to be oppressed by and rebel against. Everybody can be an aristocrat within his own Olympus." Whereas the Greeks advised, "Know thyself," the inhabitants of America's "self-reinforcing clique communities . . . live by the maxim 'Overrate thyself.' " This is an amusing and intellectually provocative point, and I briefly looked forward to Brooks taking the rest of the book to elaborate on it.

But he doesn't develop the theme, choosing instead to move on to the more banal point that Americans are full of restless energy and spiritual striving, sometimes expressed through the "mystical transubstantiation" of consumerism, which isn't so much about having what you can afford now as it is about getting rich by working hard so you can have something more luxurious in the future. "We are motivated by the Paradise Spell," Brooks concludes, "by the feeling that there is some glorious destiny just ahead." This sentiment could animate a perfectly acceptable high school class valedictorian speech or, with a few more laughs thrown in, a passable Lake Wobegon monologue by Garrison Keillor. But though he dresses it up with learned citations from many non-obvious sources -- the German theologian Jurgen Moltmann, the radical socialist Leon Samson, etc., etc. -- Brooks simply can't make Jay Gatsby's infatuation with the green light at the end of the pier feel like a fresh new expression of the American character.

Brooks's earlier book and the insightful social and political commentary in many of his magazine essays have led us to expect he would have something more original to say. (In the Times column he is still finding his voice, but it certainly isn't this bland.) I must also confess creeping impatience with his heavy reliance on satirical composites to make serious sociological points. Even Tom Wolfe, who is better at this than anyone else alive, leavens his hyperbolic generalizations with narratives about real people -- in his nonfiction, anyway. In the introduction, Brooks says it is necessary to "speak in parables, composites, and archetypes, for the personality of a people, as much as the personality of an individual, is a mysterious, changing thing." But a little of this goes a long way. When, halfway through the book, Brooks introduces a succession of composite-driven chapters with the aside "Sometimes a little satire is in order," it sounds like an apology.

And while we're on the subject of apologies, what's with Brooks's nervous little joke in the acknowledgments that his wife Jane's "design for our new house made this book necessary"? Is he saying that he's feeling a little overextended and underinspired these days? If so, give him points for honesty. In my characteristically American way, I see a worthwhile book coming out of David Brooks sometime in the future. But On Paradise Drive is a disappointment.

Reviewed by Timothy Noah
Copyright 2004, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster (May 24, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743227395
• ISBN-13: 978-0743227391
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (52 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #51,320 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

78 of 86 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Great Sequel to Bobos in Paradise, June 12, 2004

By	Poker Pro "Always Learning" (New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: On Paradise Drive: How We Live Now (And Always Have) in the Future Tense (Hardcover)

I hesitate to write a review of this book given how politically charged the other customer reviewers have been thus far. Liberals seem to dislike David Brooks because he's a moderate conservative intruder into the sacred halls of the New York Times, and conservatives think he's a sellout. Neither opinion of the man has any real reflection on his work, and we are supposed to be reviewing the book, not the man.

That said, this book is genuinely funny and interesting (right up until the very last chapter, which reads more like a sociology primer than the witty social satire that preceeded it). Brooks is simply masterful with some of his turns of phrase. His descriptions of Grill Guy's High-Powered BBQ Grill purchase at Home Depot and the snooty professionals in the Inner Ring Suburbs almost had me in tears at points I was laughing so hard. For those that appreciate a sarcastic sense of humor and a witty use of words (and doesn't mind too much when some of that sarcasm hits dangerously close to home) this is your book. Ignore the overly political criticism from people who apparently haven't even read On Paradise Drive.

25 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars It's really the future that motivates Americans, August 25, 2004

By	Paul Tognetti "The real world is so much more... (Cranston, RI USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: On Paradise Drive: How We Live Now (And Always Have) in the Future Tense (Hardcover)

David Brooks has a theory. The American people are not as shallow, greedy and self-absorbed as we appear to the rest of the world. There is no doubt that many of us are workaholics, own far more "stuff" than we really need and eat more than half of our meals in bland "chain" restaurants. In page after page in "On Paradise Drive" Brooks pokes fun at the way Americans of all classes, all occupations and all political persuasions go about living their everyday lives. He has pithy comments about the way we live, work and shop as well as the way we educate our young people. Many of his observations are "laugh out loud" funny. Now given all of this evidence it is certainly not difficult to understand why so many people all over the world dislike us so much. David Brooks would refute those perceptions and argues that what really drives the American people is an abiding optimism for the future. He firmly believes that it is this eternal optimism that distinguishes us from the rest of the world. And he makes several fairly cogent points to support his argument. Among them is a list of many of the "doom and gloom" books written over the past 50 years. I must confess that I have read a great many of them myself. This is a thoughtful, entertaining and extremely well written book. A nice change of pace for those who normally devour books on much more serious subjects. Recommended.

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Accurate description of contemporary America, June 29, 2005

By	Madison Reader (Madison, WI) - See all my reviews

I generally agree with Amazon's reviewers, but this time the reviewer has completely missed the boat. Instead of arguing that our problems "are not so big, as long as we talk about them in the right way," in the words of the reviewer, On Paradise Drive provides blow after blow against our ultra-consumer, extra-large SUV, monster house, soccer mom, grill daddy culture. He does it with humor, sarcasm and subtle insight, so perhaps some reviewers have missed his point. Ultimately, Brooks takes a critical view of our middle and upper middle class way of life, while at the same time providing a bit of hope that perhaps our ultimate life goals aren't as shallow as a perfect lawn and a shiny stainless steel grill. Anyone who views this book as a conservative, Bush supporting diatribe has completely misread this work.