{"product_id":"i-must-not-think-bad-thoughts-drive-by-essays-on-american-dread-american-dreams-paperback-softback-9780816677740","title":"I Must not Think Bad Thoughts; Drive-by Essays on American Dread, American Dreams (Paperback \/ softback) 9780816677740","description":"\u003cfont face=\"Georgia\"\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cfont size=\"6\"\u003eI Must not Think Bad Thoughts\u003c\/font\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\u003cfont size=\"5\"\u003eDrive-by Essays on American Dread, American Dreams\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cfont size=\"4\"\u003eMark Dery (Author)\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cfont size=\"3\"\u003e9780816677740\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cfont size=\"3\"\u003ePaperback \/ softback, published 1 March 2014\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cfont size=\"3\"\u003e336 pages, 15\u003cbr\u003e21.6 x 14 x 3.8 cm, 0.488 kg\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\u003cp align=\"justify\"\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u003cfont size=\"3\"\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cp\u003eMark Dery’s cultural criticism is the stuff that nightmares are made of. He’s a witty and brilliant tour guide on an intellectual journey through our darkest desires and strangest inclinations. You can’t look away even if you want to.\u003cb\u003e-Mark Frauenfelder and David Pescovitz, Boing Boing\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e \u003cdiv\u003e\u003cp\u003eMark Dery is gifted with sanity, humor, learning, and a prose style as keen as a barber’s razor. He applies those qualities to a trustworthy and entertaining analysis of the lunatic fringe, which constitutes an ever-larger portion of the discourse in America today.\u003cb\u003e-Luc Sante\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e \u003cdiv\u003e\u003cp\u003eDo not turn squeamish from the many considerations of death that lurk within-vampires, tombs, disease, corruption of many varieties. Mark Dery’s restless and stylish essay is concerned with one thing only-what it means to be alive in America.\u003cb\u003e-Richard Rodriguez, author of \u003cem\u003eBrown: The Last Discovery of America\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e \u003cdiv\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe bebop rhythms of Mark Dery’s prose reflect an intellectual excitement that is rare among contemporary cultural essayists. Reading him is like ingesting a powerful jolt of espresso.\u003cb\u003e-Ron Rosenbaum, author of \u003cem\u003eExplaining Hitler\u003c\/em\u003e and \u003cem\u003eThe Shakespeare Wars\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp align=\"justify\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cfont size=\"3\"\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFrom the cultural critic \u003cem\u003eWired\u003c\/em\u003e called “provocative and cuttingly humorous” comes a viciously funny, joltingly insightful collection of drive-by critiques of contemporary America where chaos is the new normal. Exploring the darkest corners of the national psyche and the nethermost regions of the self-the gothic, the grotesque, and the carnivalesque-Mark Dery makes sense of the cultural dynamics of the American madhouse early in the twenty-first century.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHere are essays on the pornographic fantasies of \u003cem\u003eStar Trek\u003c\/em\u003e fans, Facebook as Limbo of the Lost, George W. Bush’s fear of his inner queer, the theme-parking of the Holocaust, the homoerotic subtext of the Super Bowl, the hidden agendas of IQ tests, Santa’s secret kinship with Satan, the sadism of dentists, Hitler’s afterlife on YouTube, the sexual identity of \u003cem\u003e2001\u003c\/em\u003e’s HAL, the suicide note considered as a literary genre, the surrealist poetry of robot spam, the zombie apocalypse, Lady Gaga, the Church of Euthanasia, toy guns in the dream lives of American boys, and the polymorphous perversity of Madonna’s big toe.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDery casts a critical eye on the accepted order of things, boldly crossing into the intellectual no-fly zones demarcated by cultural warriors on both sides of America’s ideological divide: controversy-phobic corporate media, blinkered academic elites, and middlebrow tastemakers. Intellectually omnivorous and promiscuously interdisciplinary, Dery’s writing is a generalist’s guilty pleasure in an age of nanospecialization and niche marketing. From Menckenesque polemics on American society and deft deconstructions of pop culture to unflinching personal essays in which Dery turns his scalpel-sharp wit on himself, \u003cem\u003eI Must Not Think Bad Thoughts\u003c\/em\u003e is a head-spinning intellectual ride through American dreams and American nightmares.\u003cb\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cfont size=\"3\"\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eContents\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eForeword: I Must Not Read Bad Thoughts\u003cem\u003eBruce Sterling\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIntroduction\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePart I. American Magic, American Dread\u003cb\u003eDead Man Walking: What Do Zombies Mean? \u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGun Play: An American Tragedy in Three Acts \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMysterious Stranger: Grandpa Twain’s Dark Side \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAladdin Sane Called. He Wants His Lightning Bolt Back: On Lady Gaga \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJocko Homo: How Gay Is the Super Bowl? \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWimps, Wussies, and W.: Masculinity, American Style \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eStardust Memories: How David Bowie Killed the ’60s and Ushered in the ’70s and, for \u003cb\u003eOne Brief Shining Moment, Made the Mullet Hip \u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhen Animals Attack! An Aesop’s Fable about Anthropomorphism \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eToe Fou: How I Was Subliminally Seduced by Madonna’s Big Toe \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eShoah Business \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Triumph of the Shill: Fascist Branding \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eEndtime for Hitler: On the \u003cem\u003eDownfall\u003c\/em\u003e Parodies and the Inglorious Return of Der FÜhrer \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003ePart II. Myths of the Near Future: Making Sense of the Digital Age \u003cb\u003eWorld Wide Wonder Closet: On Blogging \u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e(Face)Book of the Dead \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eStraight, Gay, or Binary? HAL Comes out of the Cybernetic Closet \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWord Salad Surgery: Spam, Deconstructed \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSlashing the Borg: Resistance Is Fertile \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThings to Come: Xtreme Kink and the Future of Porn \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003ePart III. Tripe Soup for the Soul: Religion and All Its Works and Ways\u003cb\u003eTripe Soup for the Soul: The Daily Affirmation \u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePontification: On the Death of the Pope \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Prophet Margin: Jack Chick’s Comic-Book Apocalypse \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e2012: Carnival of Bunkum \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Vast Santanic Conspiracy \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003ePart IV. Anatomy Lesson: The Grotesque, the Gothic, and Other Dark Matters\u003cb\u003eOpen Wide: Dental Horror \u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGray Matter: The Obscure Pleasures of Medical Libraries \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThirteen Ways of Looking at a Severed Head \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBeen There, Pierced That: \u003cem\u003eApocalypse Culture\u003c\/em\u003e and the Escalation of Subcultural \u003cb\u003eHostilities \u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDeath to All Humans! The Church of Euthanasia’s Modest Proposal \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGreat Caesar’s Ghost: On the Crypt of the Capuchins \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAphrodites of the Operating Theater: On La Specola’s Anatomical Venuses \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGoodbye, Cruel Words: On the Suicide Note as a Literary Genre \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCortex Envy: Bringing Up Baby Einstein \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eAcknowledgments\u003cb\u003eNotes\u003cb\u003ePublication History\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\u003c\/font\u003e","brand":"Univ Of Minnesota Press","offers":[{"title":"Brand New","offer_id":52702540497176,"sku":"9780816677740","price":15.29,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"url":"https:\/\/freshlyprintedbooks.co.uk\/products\/i-must-not-think-bad-thoughts-drive-by-essays-on-american-dread-american-dreams-paperback-softback-9780816677740","provider":"Freshly Printed Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}