Against Everything
Essays
Published on 8. August 2017
Book
Paperback/Softback
320 pages
978-1-101-97174-1 (ISBN)
Description
Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award
The essays in Against Everything are learned, original, highly entertaining, and, from start to finish, dead serious, reinventing and reinvigorating what intellectuals can be and say and do. Key topics are the tyranny of exercise, the folly of food snobbery, the sexualization of childhood (and everything else), the philosophical meaning of pop music, the rise and fall of the hipster, the uses of reality TV, the impact of protest movements, and the crisis of policing. Four of the selections address, directly and unironically, the meaning of life-how to find a philosophical stance to adopt toward one's self and the world. Mark Greif manages to revivify the thought and spirit of the greatest of American dissenters, Henry David Thoreau, for our time and historical situation.
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY:
The Guardian • The Atlantic • New York Magazine • San Francisco Chronicle • Paris Review • National Post (Canada)
Longlisted for the 2017 PEN Diamonson-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay
The essays in Against Everything are learned, original, highly entertaining, and, from start to finish, dead serious, reinventing and reinvigorating what intellectuals can be and say and do. Key topics are the tyranny of exercise, the folly of food snobbery, the sexualization of childhood (and everything else), the philosophical meaning of pop music, the rise and fall of the hipster, the uses of reality TV, the impact of protest movements, and the crisis of policing. Four of the selections address, directly and unironically, the meaning of life-how to find a philosophical stance to adopt toward one's self and the world. Mark Greif manages to revivify the thought and spirit of the greatest of American dissenters, Henry David Thoreau, for our time and historical situation.
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY:
The Guardian • The Atlantic • New York Magazine • San Francisco Chronicle • Paris Review • National Post (Canada)
Longlisted for the 2017 PEN Diamonson-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Publishing group
Random House USA Inc
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Dimensions
Height: 203 mm
Width: 131 mm
Thickness: 20 mm
Weight
236 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-101-97174-1 (9781101971741)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Person
Mark Greif is co-founder of the literary and intellectual journal n+1. He is also currently an associate professor at The New School in New York.
Content
Preface
I
Against Exercise
Afternoon of the Sex Children
On Food
Octomom and the Market in Babies
II
The Concept of Experience (The Meaning of Life, Part I)
III
Radiohead, or the Philosophy of Pop
Punk: The Right Kind of Pain
Learning to Rap
IV
Gut-Level Legislation, or, Redistribution (The Meaning of Life, Part II)
V
The Reality of Reality Television
WeTube
What Was the Hipster?
VI
Anaesthetic Ideology (The Meaning of Life, Part III)
VII
Mogadishu, Baghdad, Troy, or Heroes Without War
Seeing Through Police
VIII
Thoreau Trailer Park (The Meaning of Life, Part IV)
Acknowledgments
I
Against Exercise
Afternoon of the Sex Children
On Food
Octomom and the Market in Babies
II
The Concept of Experience (The Meaning of Life, Part I)
III
Radiohead, or the Philosophy of Pop
Punk: The Right Kind of Pain
Learning to Rap
IV
Gut-Level Legislation, or, Redistribution (The Meaning of Life, Part II)
V
The Reality of Reality Television
WeTube
What Was the Hipster?
VI
Anaesthetic Ideology (The Meaning of Life, Part III)
VII
Mogadishu, Baghdad, Troy, or Heroes Without War
Seeing Through Police
VIII
Thoreau Trailer Park (The Meaning of Life, Part IV)
Acknowledgments