George W.S. Trow’s long essay about American culture and the irreversible effects of television on the national psyche, Within the Context of No-Context, was first published in the New Yorker’s Nov. 17, 1980, issue. It took up nearly the whole magazine. It changed people — and also irritated many. It still has the effect of blowing some readers’ heads off (mine, about 15 years ago) and leaving others puzzled and even cold. If you haven’t read it, you should. (Here’s a tiny taste.) The essay begins:
Author
Montana!
Let me bring you up to speed and then slow it way down:
I’ve left D.C. behind for the next four months and driven 2,500 miles to beautiful Missoula, Mont., to be the 2012 T. Anthony Pollner Professor at the University of Montana’s excellent School of Journalism. The professorship is the gift of the Pollner family, in memory of their son and brother, who graduated from Montana in 1999 and was — like so many of us — a committed (and talented) journalism junkie. Since 2001, the School of Journalism has invited a professional working journalist/author to come live here each fall and teach a seminar course of his or her own design. The Pollner professor is also on hand to help advise (in a casual way) the staff of the student-run paper, the Kaimin, which publishes four days a week. I’ll also be giving a public lecture on Oct. 22.
One-Man Book Club: How many Bedwetters are checked into Hotel Theory? Less than zero.
No intro, no explan, nothing but books. Just trying to just say, yep, read ’em and here’s what the entire book club (still just the one member) thought. Need to clear it all out before the real summer vacation reading starts later this month.
First up, Less Than Zero, by Bret Easton Ellis. This is a re-reading, 25 years or so after the fact.
Actually, 23 Julys ago, I think? Here is the cover of the very same copy I read back then and have kept on various shelves in various apartments and dwellings all these years — still smelling faintly of Bain de Soleil and Sun-In and a waft of one’s completely manufactured angst on a semesterly break home from one’s gruelingly existential life at a private college…