The Man without Qualities - Softcover

Berman, Morris

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0988334356 ISBN 13: 9780988334359

Publisher: Oliver Arts and Open Press, 2016

Synopsis

George Haskel, a retired professor of German literature, decides to found an institute to promote dullness, as a counterpoint to the hustling celebrity culture of contemporary America. The venture soon attracts a number of brilliant misfits, who transform the project into a political movement, the Authentic Party, that ultimately swells to 8 million members. Events begin to overtake George and his merry band, as luminaries such as Bill Maher, Woody Allen, and Jerry Brown get on board. The final showdown with the White House threatens a coup d'état: Will America undertake a radical shift in the direction of authenticity, or will it remain committed to business as usual?

About this title

About the Author:

Morris Berman is a poet, novelist, essayist, social critic, and cultural historian. He has written thirteen books and more than 150 articles, and has taught at a number of universities in Europe, North America, and Mexico. He won the Governor's Writers Award for Washington State in 1990, and was the first recipient of the annual Rollo May Center Grant for Humanistic Studies in 1992. In 2000, The Twilight of American Culture was named a Notable Book by the New York Times Book Review, and in 2013 he received the Neil Postman Award for Career Achievement in Public Intellectual Activity from the Media Ecology Association. Dr. Berman lives in Mexico.

Review:

Morris Berman has a marvelous comic sense of America's intersecting neuroses, and the scary place that they are taking us. He's a Voltaire for our shaky time and this is his Candide.
    -- James Howard Kunstler, author of The Long Emergency and the World Made By Hand novels
In The Man Without Qualities, renowned historical and cultural critic, Morris Berman, delves into the complex topic of authenticity with humor, warmth and crisp prose. HIs protagonist, George, is a German lit professor who is bored with his life and especially with his unengaged students. Leaving academia behind, George embarks on a singular mission, to launch the Dullness Institute, in defiance of all that is endlessly competitive,
needlessly greed-driven, and generally fake in the world. To be dull, for George, is to shun the need to "project" and rather, to just "be." In doing so, the impact of George's vision and that of his colorful collective of like-minded friends and eventually millions of people, alter the course of humanity.  Berman's novel shines a skeptical light on how we are evolving and shows us a better, more authentic path.
    --Nomi Prins, author of It Takes a Pillage, All the Presidents'Bankers, and other works
As much a work of philosophy as a novel, Morris Berman's The Man Without Qualities offers a new political orientation--None of the Above. In the aftermath of politics as usual, partisans of Berman's Dullness Institute can at last give a hearty Nietzschean laugh and say, "Workers of the World!...Relax!"
    --Curtis White, author of We, Robots, The Science Delusion, The Middlemind, and Memories of My Father Watching Television

About this edition

• Publisher: Oliver Arts and Open Press
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 0988334356
• ISBN 13: 9780988334359
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 176