Experiments Against Reality: The Fate of Culture in the Postmodern Age (Paperback)

by Roger Kimball (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist
Like his New Criterion colleague Hilton Kramer, Kimball writes forcefully and fluently about the intellectual currents that affect the arts. Like Kramer, he upholds high modernism, as epitomized by the moral seriousness of T. S. Eliot, subject of the warmest piece in this book. Like Kramer's Twilight of the Intellectuals (1999), this book contains originally freestanding essays that share a common theme. Whereas the theme of Kramer's Twilight was American liberal intellectuals' obstinate tolerance of Communism, Kimball's collection is concerned with various forms of the denial of reality in modern literature and philosophy. Because his subjects are greater artists and intellects than most of Kramer's in Twilight , Kimball's is a more engaging book. Kimball is as keenly gratifying as he is because, though he rues the intellectual and spiritual mistakes of such figures as J. S. Mill and Nietzsche, he grants their personal weaknesses and literary strengths. Even when his subjects have very few redeeming characteristics--Sartre, or Foucault, for instance--Kimball doesn't demonize them as he demolishes their vicious ideas. Superb intellectual journalism. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review
A book you will relish.... Kimball's essays on recent poets and thinkers...are as wise as they are elegantly written. -- Martin Gardner

His position is conservative but not reactionary, humanistic but not populist, fresh but never trendy. -- John Simon

One of the most candid and perceptive critics of American culture. -- Gertrude Himmelfarb, Times Literary Supplement

Stylish, richly allusive, and immensely readable...an invaluable collection. -- John Gross

Will be required reading for those who want a significant perspective on...our contemporary culture... -- Frederick Morgan

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Product Details

• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Ivan R. Dee, Publisher (February 25, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 156663430X
• ISBN-13: 978-1566634304
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.8 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #531,168 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

56 of 62 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fairy Tales Don't Come True., February 5, 2001

By	Joseph Hartmann (naperville, il USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Experiments Against Reality: The Fate of Culture in the Postmodern Age (Hardcover)

Most critics of American culture are able to see broad causes for contemporary problems. Their insight is almost oversight. Roger Kimball has an amazing ability to see the spawning wisp of the thread that weaves through the matrix of our cultural decline. These series of essays look back over the last century at the critics, novelists, and philosophers who stood on either side of the question, "Is reality real or can I make it what I wish?" Those ascribing to the latter, tended to be cultural heroes for their encouragement of a new kind of freedom which Kimball shows is really a decaying licentiousness. Most of these experimenters against reality were celebrated by the intelligentsia of the time for discovering a new kind of happiness. The only problem, as Kimball points out, is that their suggested liberations have led to misery both personally and culturally. There are also excellent essays describing the stalwarts who stood astride the decline of society yelling "Stop". Primary amongst these is Mr Kimball himself whose essay, "The Trivialization of Outrage" will be a classic as he decries the lack of beauty in today's "art". This is a book that needs to be studied to be appreciated. A little effort brings great rewards. Hopefully we will learn as Kimball so rightly puts it that "the liberations we crave have served chiefly to compound the depth of our loss."

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Yet More Brilliance from Kimball. , August 31, 2004

By	Bernard Chapin "Ora Et Labora!" (CHICAGO! USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This is one of my favorite books and a person could hardly do better than to purchase the two for one Amazon deal that includes "The Long March." I thought of reviewing "Experiments..." today because upon reading the latest issue of The New Criterion (the journal Kimball edits) the author includes, in an essay concerning shame, a reference to Robert Musil. This reference immediately reminded me of the superlative essay this book contains regarding Musil and his masterpiece, "The Man without Qualities."
"Experiments..." is highly similar to "Lives of the Mind" in its ecletic choice of subject matter. Unlike "The Long March," it is not uniformly guided by a single theme but this does not decrease its educational merit.
I should also state that this is not a partisan book. It's for intellectuals of all stripes but is particularly valuable to those who cherish our culture and western civilization. Enjoy, I wish I could read these essays for the first time all over again.

18 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A Bit Disapointed, July 24, 2004

By	everspell (virginia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Experiments Against Reality: The Fate of Culture in the Postmodern Age (Hardcover)

I've read Kimball's essays in other places and enjoyed them, so I was a little disappointed with much of the content of this collection. Many of these pieces read more like personal lambastes than scholarly criticism. The essay on Foucault was especially distasteful. There are plenty of legitimate reasons to despise Michel Foucault, both as an intellectual and as a human being. Kimball, though, reserves his most caustic aspersion for Foucault's homosexuality in what amounts to a sneering, homophobic rant. The essay on Sartre is also a bit ridiculous. Light on actual analysis, it is replete with anecdotes intended to portray him as a bratty prima-donna. No doubt he was, but does it really matter? Admire him or not, Sartre, who declined a Nobel Prize, was one of the pre-eminent intellectuals of the twentieth century, and to judge him deserves much more than contemptuous mocking of his private habits. Oddly enough, in the Foucault essay, Being and Nothingness is rightly described as "important and original," but this is solely to belittle Foucault, Jacques Derrida, et al by way of comparison for having failed to produce anything of similar eminence.

Kimball does tend to come off as a reactionary curmudgeon, and his pontificating becomes obnoxious and seems too often irrelevant. This is sad because when Roger Kimball writes about art and culture in the New Criterion and elsewhere, he can be a trenchant voice. What is revealed in several of these pieces is a darker side.

All of this being said, several of the essays contained herein are must reads. "The Trivialization of Outrage" is important, concise, and persuasive. Anyone with the slightest interest in the state of our culture should read this. In a similar vein is an essay entitled "Does Shame Have a Future?," which isn't included in this collection but is available on the New Criterion's website. "A Craving for Reality: T.S. Eliot Today" is excellent, and so are the essays on John Stuart Mill and Nietzsche.

Experiments is worth reading. Frustrating at times, even offensive at its worst. But the important essays, the ones that are serious and avoid being cheap shots, are important enough and moving enough to buy the entire book.