Symptoms of Culture

Deft, funny and suggestive, these excursions into America are bound together only in the lightest of ways: all of the ""symptoms"" Garber (Vice Versa; Vested Interest) analyzes contain ""fantasies of the universal, the general, the eternal."" Thoroughly steeped in critical theory (which at times results in too-clever, overly dense or unpersuasive arguments), the author also juxtaposes periods and genres with instinctive dexterity and humor. Yoking together Richard Nixon, The Wizard of Oz and Charlotte's Web, Garber reveals the troubling implications of the concept of ""greatness"" that connects them: it invokes ""a fantasy of control... of a powerful agency, divine or other.... The political logic of this is as disturbing as its psychology."" Other chapters discuss anti-Semitism (Semitic background being still somehow shameful, as the handling of Madeline Albright's rediscovered ancestry suggests); Jell-O's crucial role in the Rosenberg case; the Promise Keepers; and, particularly persuasively, the ""political incorrigibility"" of evolutionary theory from the Scopes trial to today. ""What may seem an incontrovertibly left position in one moment may uncannily pop up fifty years later as a basic tenet of the right,"" Garber observes. ""As the overdetermined example of creationism and evolution suggests, there can be more than one way to stage a primal scene."" Most likely too difficult for mainstream appeal, this is still a fun house for the intellectually playful. (May)