Customer Reviews

Oh, what a blow that phantom gave me!

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This is a very curious book, and when I read it in the mid 70's it had a profound influence on my relationship to the media. Do not miss the studies of brain wave function comparing activity level among readers, watchers of television, and sleepers; the latter two are about equal. The incident of the poet doing a reading of his poems in a coffee house who could not get the audience's attention until he stopped reading and turned on a tape recording of himslf reading the same materials is on the surface amusing but also chilling in what it says about society's relationship to real experience and simulation.

While ostensibly about aboriginal peoples it is his extension of his research into our own society that for me makes this book most interesting and important.

Edmund Carpenter is pretty much a genius. The book is easy to read without being the slightest bit dumbed down. Not only for those interested in media studies or anthropology, but for anyone who wants to know more about our modern world. Full of insight and fascinating accounts of many cultures.

I found this book by accident -- it was on a cart at my local bookstore waiting to be shelved. I read it voraciously. I can say that in many ways it changed my life: the story of the new guinea school where mathematics was taught by rote (including errors) caused me to rethink many academic disciplines. The story of the australian teaching eskimos to use a boomerang with the rejoinder "just don't tell any visiting anthropologists where you learned this" caused me to rethink anthropology specifically. Altogether, this book, by a self-proclaimed maverick, broadened my horizons in significant ways. Consider it to be an an exercise in independent thought.