Product Description

Professor Carey's frontal assault on the principles and practices of literary modernism caused an immediate critical storm, establishing itself as a key text for all future discussion of the subject.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #53745 in Books
• Published on: 1992-10-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

Customer Reviews

Fascinating
A very well-written book full of fascinating details. A few criticisms: I would have preferred a chronological approach, to show how attitudes had changed over the period covered - this is only approximated by the ordering of material, ending with Hitler and covering postmodernism in the postscript; occasional lapses into subjective language are unworthy of the author; a failure to recognise that Joyce not only wrote about the 'common man' but was happy to associate with him, suggesting that his prolix style was not simply the result of a desire to be 'exclusive' (and to say this is true of others is a bit simplistic). The treatment of Orwell also seemed a bit unfair, and did Nietzsche really have less subtlety and imagination than DH Lawrence? I would agree with the central thesis - that to view 'the masses' as a uniformly subhuman group is an arrogant fallacy. But surely it's valid to be critical of and frustrated by the mass media that pander to the lowest common denominator, even if their audience are, individually, more intelligent than what they read.

surprisingly funny
This is probably politically incorrect but I found this book very funny in parts as it mirrors to some extent contemporary concerns about dumbing down. The shock & outrage (described by John Carey) felt by the intelligentsia at the thought of (for instance) the working class being encouraged to read is funny but also very chilling and echoes many of the ill informed leaders carried by many (so called) newspapers 100 years later. A thought provoking and unsettling read.

A book that gives an answer to the way we are
John Carey has given us an insight to the reason why we are the way we are. Prejudice has always been a part of this country's social fabric and the middle classes are as guilty as the ignorant working class that is made to bear the blame. This is a book that is interesting to read as the writer carefully unravels the class myth and gives us an answer to many questions that we did not even know to ask. This was a liberating read for me and I would have easily given it the five crown if some of the people I gave it to had not found it hard going. But this is the situation in a mentally lazy society where we are made to feed off baby spoons through pop culture, that ensures that we remain unaware in a world that is increasingly looking like that magic phrase: The More You Look, The Less You See.