Trash Culture: Popular Culture and the Great Tradition
by Richard K. Simon, PhD '77
University of California Press, 1999; $15.95 (pop culture).
Who is Prince Harry's real father? Will Ally McBeal ever find true love? Does Oprah have a new diet plan? Inquiring minds are hungry to know, and pop culture delivers all the junk food you can eat. But Simon pulls the garbage out of the disposal, arguing that today's pop sagas disguise deeper, archetypal stories, recast to sate a consumer society. Comparing works of "low" and "high" culture, he draws some surprising parallels: People magazine can be read as Greek tragedy, Rambo seen as a modern-day Iliad and Star Trek as an upbeat Gulliver's Travels. It's a fun, provocative treatise by the chair of humanities at Cal Poly, who finds that his students get more out of the old and new narratives by analyzing them in pairs.
24/7: Living It Up and Doubling Down in the New Las Vegas
by Andrés Martinez, MA '89
Villard, 1999; $25 (urban studies/gambling).
With a $50,000 book advance in his pocket, Martinez headed for the nation's fastest-growing city, bent on losing his wad of traveler's checks and finding the essence of the modern-day Gomorrah. What the former Wall Street Journal reporter discovered was the ultimate American theme park, a place where "everything is a superlative or runs the risk of being blown up." At the heart of this book, organized as a tour of the city's overgrown hotels, are the characters Martinez found: the minister who shines shoes at a topless joint ("This is where the Lord wants me," he says. "There's a lot of hurt here"), the aging courtesan turned day trader ("It's better odds than you'll find here," she says), the professional gambler who managed to raise six kids while losing $8 million. The author, on the other hand, somehow avoided losing his whole advance.
Fool
by Frederick G. Dillen, '70
Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 1999; $23.95 (fiction).
Barnaby Griswold is a fool&emdash;a clumsy, self-absorbed, insensitive man who plays fast and loose, both with women and with money. In this, Dillen's second novel (Hero was named best first novel of 1994 by the Dictionary of Literary Biography), Griswold loses everything&emdash;his wife and daughters, his livelihood, and his social and business connections. He's even kicked out of his last refuge&emdash;his boyhood summer home. Divorced, deserted and flat broke, Griswold must try to rebuild his life. That begins when, humbled by his losses, he takes on the responsibility of caring for his wife's ailing mother and finally realizes what a meaningful relationship is all about. This is a story of redemption, of a man's ability to bounce back from failure and find hope, joy and love.
Momma and the Meaning of Life: Tales of Psychotherapy
by Irvin D. Yalom, professor emeritus of psychiatry
Basic Books, 1999; $24 (philosophy/psychology).
In an era when Prozac, Xanax and Paxil are practically household names, Yalom is still fascinated by old-fashioned talk therapy. In this follow-up to his bestselling Love's Executioner, Yalom again takes readers behind the therapist's closed door. Four chapters are drawn directly from experiences in his Stanford practice; the other two are fictional. We meet Paula, a terminally ill dynamo; Magnolia, a patient Yalom longs to confide in; Irene, a depressed surgeon with whom the psychiatrist almost comes to blows. The tales often reveal as much about Yalom's inner life&emdash;his fears, secret attractions, memories of his mother&$mdash;as they do about his patients'.
