The Disappearance of the Outside

The author recounts his life in Romania and in America, relating his thoughts on revolution, freedom, and the world today

Instead of McLuhan's rosily interactive global village, essayist and poet-provocateur Codrescu, National Public Radio commentator, sees emerging a "new electronic globe" that stifles human creativity, thought and imagination. In "shopping-mall America," reality is continually manufactured and people are becoming mere appendages of engines and gadgets. In the totalitarian East, the crude hand of the state intervenes, though Codrescu saw signs of progress during a visit to his native Romania, where TV "literally woke up the country" as Ceaucescu's execution was aired on screens that the dictator once controlled. Codrescu argues in these acute if alarmist essays for a rebirth of the imagination, with a nod to surrealism and Dada. Kundera, Solzhenitsyn, Burroughs, Kafka, Garcia Marquez and Ted Berrigan are points on his literary compass as he maps a terrain where life seems increasingly devoid of meaning. (June) this clause and this phrase unclear to me.eed/eliminate this part--pick up from below 'Codrescue argues in etc.--if the beginning of sent. gives you oblems;otherwise leave as is:meaning that Ceaucescue was Dracula and now that he is eliminated there is a surge of nationalism, and in the West, as we state earlier in review, our reality is manufactured, making for programmed nonreality.gs
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

"I am writing this literally in the ruins of the Communist world, in my hometown of Sibiu, Romania," writes Codrescu at the beginning of his 21st book, a long, uneven essay of at times pontifical statements by a minor poet whose contributions to his adopted country, while often interesting, are usually unexceptional. Like some emigres from Central or Eastern Europe, especially those who lack the talent or the reputation of, say, a Solzhenitsyn or a Kundera, Codrescu takes America to task for its superficiality, its lack of some quality seemingly found only where a lack of personal freedom ensures the primacy of the word over the image. Readers who feel the need to read Codrescu will be better served by his poems.
- Vincent D. Balitas, Allentown Coll., Center Valley, Pa.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.