Surfing the Zeitgeist - Softcover

Adair, Gilbert

3.79

19 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0571179916 ISBN 13: 9780571179916

Publisher: Faber & Faber, 1997

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A collection of Adair's essays written for the Sunday Times and Esquire magazine dealing with the cultural events and artefacts of the first half of this decade as well as the widest reaches of culture: fashion, commercials, controversies and debates that have engaged the consciousness of people today.

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About the Author:

Gilbert Adair has published novels, essays, translations, children's books and poetry. He has also written screenplays, including The Dreamers from his own novel for Bernardo Bertolucci.

From Publishers Weekly:

British writer Adair has an imposing record with three novels, books on film such as Hollywood's Vietnam and Flickers and one of the more convincing acts of translation with his version of Georges Perec's "e"-less A Void. This collection of short, occasional essays he wrote for London's Sunday Times is less impressive. He covers a range of contemporary subjects--"On decadence" and "On Freud" to "On AIDS"--but all are rather lightweight. Adair tries, ultimately unsuccessfully, to give his book the kind of sharp, witty analyses of popular foibles found in Roland Barthes's Mythologies. But part of the problem is that Adair's reflections do not travel well, since they are too often based on what he read in the British press or saw on a British stage the day before; he quotes a theater critic like Michael Billington as if he were well known, not just in England but all over the world, which is certainly not the case. Moreover, even for the London Times in its current sadly decomposed state, the comments here are often trite, such as in "On melody," when he wonders why the tune of Gershwin's "Summertime" "took so long" to be discovered by a composer, any composer at all. The same holds true with jokes, as when he suggests in "On American presidents" that Jimmy Carter should star "in a play entitled A Streetcar Named Retire." Such problems might be forgiven a writer faced with a newspaper deadline, but the mistake is in immortalizing them. This prolific author will no doubt soon offer a new book of greater value on one of his pet themes, films or France.

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