EVERYDAY APOCALYPSE: The Sacred Revealed in Radiohead, the Simpsons, and Other Pop Culture Icons

"Apocalypse"—as a genre and as a mind-set—is commonly misunderstood, as something hidden in the back of the Bible and characterized by a gnostic or nihilistic disdain for anything earthly or human. So says Dark, a teacher of English at Christ Presbyterian Academy in Nashville, arguing persuasively that genuine apocalypse, informed by Scripture and the rest of biblical tradition, isn't hidden. It can be seen in books and music and on screens large and small. As the first chapter argues, apocalypse isn't primarily about destruction or fortune telling, but about the future pushing into the present, "cracking the pavement of the status quo... announcing a new world of unrealized possibility." The remaining chapters report on what Dark sees as he looks at pop culture through the wide-angle lens of God's ultimate purposes for all of creation. Dark is a close reader not only of pages (Shakespeare and Flannery O'Connor), but tunes (Radiohead and Beck), and film (Truman Show and The Matrix). He is a wide, wise, and good reader, and this book shows him also to be a fine writer – illuminating, engaging, often funny, sometimes disturbing. Familiarity with the cultural phenomena to which he points is helpful, but not necessary. Throughout he helpfully gestures toward others with apocalyptic eyeglasses: poets, theologians, critics, celebrities. If readers allow the book to do its work, they, too, will acquire what he calls "apocalyptic acumen" or "imaginative magnanimity." (Dec.)