Pop Culture
Prefacing the collections signature examination of the issue of plagiarism within a longstanding historical context of aesthetic borrowing and lending practices is the author’s admission to growing up in the age pop culture pastiche. The imagery he provides presents a catalog of iconic and era-defining entertainment choices which themselves are constructed firmly a foundation of existence made possibly only through reference and allusion:
“I grew up watching Captain Kangaroo, moon landings, zillions of TV ads, the Banana Splits, M*A*S*H, and The Mary Tyler Moore Show…I knew Monkees before Beatles, Belmondo before Bogart, and “remember” the movie Summer of ’42 from a Mad magazine satire, though I’ve still never seen the film itself.”
Fiction
Short pieces of fiction are scattered among the non-fiction essays in this collection. This can be disconcerting because they are not identified as such. The seamless transition between fact and fiction is thorough, raising potential that some will read the fiction and mistake it for fact. But, then, that’s the point because what really ties this collection together remains the influence of referencing, allusion, pastiche and pop culture connections. The imagery in this excerpt gains its power from the effect of juxtaposing what we think we know about Jerry Lewis versus the potential possibility that we really don’t know as much as we think:
“Did you know that Jerry Lewis turned down the role of the killer in Cruising, the lead in Being There, and the title role in Charly? What’s more, he turned down the Robert Shaw part in Jaws, and the role of Salieri in Amadeus. Also Peter Ustinov’s part in Logan’s Run. Can you imagine him as Humbert Humbert? Apparently he couldn’t.”
That Day
Like everyone who was alive that day, the author is able to provide a uniquely personal set of imagery to describe how September 11, 2001 made the transition from just another day to one that will never be forgotten:
“It began for me here, in the same room where I sit now, in Boerum Hill. It began as a non sequitur crackle of sunlight thunder, on a gorgeous morning after an evening of thunderstorms…My under-caffeinated denial slid from the fact of it—they’re on fire, wow—to tangential irritations, stuff I had to get done this week.”
“The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance”
Another thematic centerpiece of the collection is the author’s allegorical deconstruction of the allegorical foundation of a John Wayne western film. If all capsule summaries of films were this entertaining and well-written and insightful, nobody would ever have known the name Leonard Maltin:
“The chewy center of TMWSLV is a gunfight. A man stands in the main street of a western town and (apparently) kills another man. The victim...represents chaos and anxiety and fear to all who know him, and has been regarded as unkillable, almost in the manner of a monster or zombie from another movie genre; his dispatch is regarded by the local population with astonished relief and gratitude, such that they will shower the killer with regard”
