cover image Reality Isn't What It Used to Be: Theatrical Politics, Ready-To-Wear Religion, Global Myths, Primitive Chic, and Other Wonders of the Postmodern World

Reality Isn't What It Used to Be: Theatrical Politics, Ready-To-Wear Religion, Global Myths, Primitive Chic, and Other Wonders of the Postmodern World

Walter Truett Anderson, Walt Anderson. HarperCollins Publishers, $18.95 (288pp) ISBN 978-0-06-250021-2

To Anderson, postmodernism is more than punk rock, Julio Cortazar's stories, deconstruction and John Le Carre's spy novels, though they all manifest its rationale. The post-modernist outlook acknowledges that society is ``a social construct of reality,'' he claims, adding that ``post-modernism is globalism''--the emergence of a global culture transcending class, race and nation-state. Within this framework, Anderson ( The Upstart Spring: Esalen and the American Awakening ) discusses a vast range of phenomena: totalitarianism, made-for-television movies, ``pseudoevents'' like the invasion of Grenada, neo-paganism, Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses , camp, New Criticism, Eastern mysticism, etc. He looks into constructivist psychotherapy, in which the therapist acts as editor of the patient's versions of reality. This heady discourse demonstrates that post-modernism, more than a cliche, can serve as an analytical tool in mapping a world still being born. (Aug.)