Raised by Puppets, Only to Be Killed by Research - Hardcover

Codrescu, Andrei

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0201121832 ISBN 13: 9780201121834

Publisher: Addison-Wesley, 1989

Synopsis

Witty and original essays on America discuss art administrators' "punk nostalgia," food fanciers in search of new culinary thrills, and the remarkable and outrageous face of everyday life in the U.S.A

About this title

From Publishers Weekly:

Codrescu, author of 22 books of poetry, fiction, essays and memoirs, is a critic-at-large for National Public Radio. Assembled here are his NPR pieces, freestyle columns in which, swimming gleefully against the mainstream, he sounds off--"I believe in strife"--on whatever comes to mind. In "The Lord's Corporations," Codrescu's subject is television evangelists, and in "Get Your Pravda : Special Opium Issue!" it is free speech and the impact of fascism on individual vision. He also editorializes on surrogate mothers, Kansas, doing the twist and literary rejection. This native Transylvanian's joyful irreverence for the banalities of American culture can meander frivolously to a halt for lack of a burning issue, but when writing about a topic vitally interesting to him, Codrescu's pitch is perfect and his fanciful wit flawlessly cutting. A sterner editorial hand could have shaped a stronger collection; nevertheless, Codrescu's bracing "alternative" complaints about shopping malls ("my hell"), Greyhound bus trips and "yuppie vertigo" often royally fulfill his stance that "things are not perfect."
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal:

Once a week, National Public Radio's "All Things Considered" offers us an essay by Codrescu, poet, professor, and social critic. His second collection of these essays is as delightful and sometimes disturbing as the first, A Craving for Swan ( LJ 1/87). From the most trivial (Vanna White is a "a Dada artist" who methodically destroys language) to the most significant--the condition of our souls, say, or our imaginations--little escapes Codrescu's penetrating vision in his 100 meditations (he uses his glasses as prophylactics, he says, to keep his "eyes from making reality pregnant"). The result is a book that uses whimsy and a penetrating intelligence to make our lives more vivid.
- Charles Bishop, Univ. of New Orleans
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Addison-Wesley
• Publication date: 1989
• ISBN 10: 0201121832
• ISBN 13: 9780201121834
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 198