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A review by alex_ellermann
The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America by Daniel J. Boorstin
1.0
I hated this book.
I'd call it pretentious, but late author Daniel J. Boorstin was a Librarian of Congress; a winner of the Pulitzer, Bancroft, Parkman, Dexter, and Watson Davis prizes; Director of the National Museum of American History of the Smithsonian Institution; Morton Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago; Harvard summa cum laude; Yale Ph.D.; and "double first" Rhodes Scholar at Balliol College, Oxford. It isn't pretension if you have the resume to back it up. So I'll just call it snobbish.
In this book, first published in 1961, Boorstin explores not just pseudo-events, but artifice in all its forms. I'm there for his elucidation of the concept of the pseudo-event (loosely defined as events such as news conferences and photo-ops: events designed to create news and shape perception, rather than reflect events already underway). However, he takes his book to places I can't follow; places that seem, loosely speaking, like an old man yelling at clouds.
Boorstin derides celebrity culture with all the venom of the distinguished academic who must cede the limelight to vacuous people with great hair. He derides then-modern travel with all the superiority of the man who could afford tickets on a luxury liner and despairs of having to rub shoulders with the hoi polloi while contemplating art in the Louvre. Speaking of art, he derides prints and reproductions with the snobbishness of the man who has seen the real thing. And don't get him started on music. Or film. Or books. Or, well, anything that seems to have come into vogue after he passed the age of thirty.
Well, up yours, pal. People have always been attracted to and interested in beautiful people. Get over it. Furthermore, I grew up much closer to the bottom of America's socioeconomic ladder than the top. There was no luxury liner in my future, but the democratization of travel (which the author derides) opened Europe to me, anyway. There were no art galleries or symphonies in the small town where I grew up, but I could conceive a love for art and music thanks to the prints and records Boorstin so casually derides as pale imitations of the real thing. And don't get me started on his opinion of those who would presume to read the works of the Greeks and Romans without first learning Greek and Latin. I'm staggered by this guy's elitism. I'm getting angry all over again, just thinking about this book.
To be fair, Boorstin's deconstruction of advertising and political theater is as relevant today as it was in 1961. However, those elements aren't enough to rescue this book. As a beneficiary of the democratization of travel, art, music, philosophy, and literature which Boorstin so abhors, allow me to put my M.A. with Highest Distinction to work by saying "Get bent, Daniel J. Boorstin. And take your book with you."
I'd call it pretentious, but late author Daniel J. Boorstin was a Librarian of Congress; a winner of the Pulitzer, Bancroft, Parkman, Dexter, and Watson Davis prizes; Director of the National Museum of American History of the Smithsonian Institution; Morton Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago; Harvard summa cum laude; Yale Ph.D.; and "double first" Rhodes Scholar at Balliol College, Oxford. It isn't pretension if you have the resume to back it up. So I'll just call it snobbish.
In this book, first published in 1961, Boorstin explores not just pseudo-events, but artifice in all its forms. I'm there for his elucidation of the concept of the pseudo-event (loosely defined as events such as news conferences and photo-ops: events designed to create news and shape perception, rather than reflect events already underway). However, he takes his book to places I can't follow; places that seem, loosely speaking, like an old man yelling at clouds.
Boorstin derides celebrity culture with all the venom of the distinguished academic who must cede the limelight to vacuous people with great hair. He derides then-modern travel with all the superiority of the man who could afford tickets on a luxury liner and despairs of having to rub shoulders with the hoi polloi while contemplating art in the Louvre. Speaking of art, he derides prints and reproductions with the snobbishness of the man who has seen the real thing. And don't get him started on music. Or film. Or books. Or, well, anything that seems to have come into vogue after he passed the age of thirty.
Well, up yours, pal. People have always been attracted to and interested in beautiful people. Get over it. Furthermore, I grew up much closer to the bottom of America's socioeconomic ladder than the top. There was no luxury liner in my future, but the democratization of travel (which the author derides) opened Europe to me, anyway. There were no art galleries or symphonies in the small town where I grew up, but I could conceive a love for art and music thanks to the prints and records Boorstin so casually derides as pale imitations of the real thing. And don't get me started on his opinion of those who would presume to read the works of the Greeks and Romans without first learning Greek and Latin. I'm staggered by this guy's elitism. I'm getting angry all over again, just thinking about this book.
To be fair, Boorstin's deconstruction of advertising and political theater is as relevant today as it was in 1961. However, those elements aren't enough to rescue this book. As a beneficiary of the democratization of travel, art, music, philosophy, and literature which Boorstin so abhors, allow me to put my M.A. with Highest Distinction to work by saying "Get bent, Daniel J. Boorstin. And take your book with you."