The Alphabet of Modern Annoyances

Rating:
Summary: Not literature, and thank God
Review: In the interests of full disclosure, let me say: A) I know the author; B) He did not ask me to do this. Mostly, I'm motivated by the completely idiotic Kirkus review -- of course the author doesn't offer serious solutions. It ceases to be funny and turns into a policy paper if you offer solutions. Steinberg's take on the post office in "B is for bureaucracy" is dead on, as is "O is for Oprah." What the Kirkus review claims is the one bright spot, the terza rima parody, is the singular unfunny chapter in this book. And as for going over familiar ground, no one that I've seen has gotten to the heart of Oprah as has Steingberg. This isn't literature, and thank God. It's a hilarious, often mean-spirited look at what annoys the hell out of the author, and it doesn't pretend to be anything else.

Rating:
Summary: Entertain, scabrious look at modern life
Review: Neil Steinberg is annoyed. Not irritated, bothered, vexed or harassed. He's angry, in the same fashion as Mark Twain, who wrote the following: "I don't ever seem to be in a good enough humor with anything to satirize it; no, I want to stand up before it & curse it, & foam at the mouth -- or take a club and pound it to rags & pulp."

Fortunately for his book, "The Alphabet of Modern Annoyances," Steinberg doesn't take a club to politicians, the workplace, victims, Disney and Elvis. What he does do is line them up, in alphabetic order, no less, and bash at each of them for a couple of pages -- short, measured doses of hilarity mixed with fact -- before moving on to the next target. In the court of law, Steinberg would be convicted of drive-by satirizing.

And yet, Steinberg indulges in the non-humorist's attribute of fairness. Almost all his essays have that quality of giving his target an even break. Although always disliking Disney in general ("Disneyland seems like hell to me, the Hieronymus Bosch "Garden of Earthly Delights" version, with weird creatures and tortured denizens scrabbling over each other trying to find a way out."), he's not satisfied with leaving it there. He forces himself to articulate his passionate hatred of all things Disneyfied: its blandness, its desire to take our basic cultural heritage and drain them of the things that make them interesting in the first place to make them most appealing to the widest possible audience.

Even that, to Steinberg, is not enough. "We live in a world of bland smarm. Disney is no worse than -- I don't know, "Hello Kitty," or "Polly Pocket," or "My Little Pony," or any of those warm fuzzies designed to pick the pockets of the young."

He even looks to the left-wing Disney critics, and finds them more abhorrent than the object of their criticism.

Finally, Steinberg zeroes in on the undercurrent of totalitarianism that underlies the Disney "experience." The theme parks have taken the idea behind mass entertainment -- the letting loose of strictures, the temporary rebellion against society's constraints, and perverted it into something that's more constrained, more limited than real-life. "The implication is that our society has decayed so much that people will fly to Florida and pay $33 to walk down a main street that isn't cluttered with crack vials and dozing junkies."

(Maybe, but another thought came to mind as I was writing this. Perhaps we live in a society where the mockery of cultural values has become an everyday occurrence, not something performed the week before Lent. We have corporate honchos who crow about the number of loyal employees they've axed, pop stars acting as poster children of sluttery, professional athletes caught with prostitutes and drugs and awarded with multi-million dollar contracts, and painters, sculptures, "performance artists" and architects to whom craftsmanship and beauty are as taboo to them as revealing how much you make in a year is to anyone else. Is it any wonder that people willingly shell out the bucks to experience a society that not only is rigidly controlled, but dedicated solely to entertaining the people who pay its bills?)

Steinberg's alphabet is a catalog of cultural misdeeds that's compulsive to read and to read out loud. By revealing Oprah as the smarm-queen she is, UFO buffs for the ill-educated louts they are, and invasive, insensitive TV journalists for the vultures they have become, Neil Steinberg has performed a public service that's as funny and it is true. After the fall of the American civilization, one hopes that his book will be found among the rubble to show that not everyone fell for the cultural bottom-line.

Rating:
Summary: Entertain, scabrious look at modern life
Review: Neil Steinberg is annoyed. Not irritated, bothered, vexed or harassed. He's angry, in the same fashion as Mark Twain, who wrote the following: "I don't ever seem to be in a good enough humor with anything to satirize it; no, I want to stand up before it & curse it, & foam at the mouth -- or take a club and pound it to rags & pulp."

Fortunately for his book, "The Alphabet of Modern Annoyances," Steinberg doesn't take a club to politicians, the workplace, victims, Disney and Elvis. What he does do is line them up, in alphabetic order, no less, and bash at each of them for a couple of pages -- short, measured doses of hilarity mixed with fact -- before moving on to the next target. In the court of law, Steinberg would be convicted of drive-by satirizing.

And yet, Steinberg indulges in the non-humorist's attribute of fairness. Almost all his essays have that quality of giving his target an even break. Although always disliking Disney in general ("Disneyland seems like hell to me, the Hieronymus Bosch "Garden of Earthly Delights" version, with weird creatures and tortured denizens scrabbling over each other trying to find a way out."), he's not satisfied with leaving it there. He forces himself to articulate his passionate hatred of all things Disneyfied: its blandness, its desire to take our basic cultural heritage and drain them of the things that make them interesting in the first place to make them most appealing to the widest possible audience.

Even that, to Steinberg, is not enough. "We live in a world of bland smarm. Disney is no worse than -- I don't know, "Hello Kitty," or "Polly Pocket," or "My Little Pony," or any of those warm fuzzies designed to pick the pockets of the young."

He even looks to the left-wing Disney critics, and finds them more abhorrent than the object of their criticism.

Finally, Steinberg zeroes in on the undercurrent of totalitarianism that underlies the Disney "experience." The theme parks have taken the idea behind mass entertainment -- the letting loose of strictures, the temporary rebellion against society's constraints, and perverted it into something that's more constrained, more limited than real-life. "The implication is that our society has decayed so much that people will fly to Florida and pay $33 to walk down a main street that isn't cluttered with crack vials and dozing junkies."

(Maybe, but another thought came to mind as I was writing this. Perhaps we live in a society where the mockery of cultural values has become an everyday occurrence, not something performed the week before Lent. We have corporate honchos who crow about the number of loyal employees they've axed, pop stars acting as poster children of sluttery, professional athletes caught with prostitutes and drugs and awarded with multi-million dollar contracts, and painters, sculptures, "performance artists" and architects to whom craftsmanship and beauty are as taboo to them as revealing how much you make in a year is to anyone else. Is it any wonder that people willingly shell out the bucks to experience a society that not only is rigidly controlled, but dedicated solely to entertaining the people who pay its bills?)

Steinberg's alphabet is a catalog of cultural misdeeds that's compulsive to read and to read out loud. By revealing Oprah as the smarm-queen she is, UFO buffs for the ill-educated louts they are, and invasive, insensitive TV journalists for the vultures they have become, Neil Steinberg has performed a public service that's as funny and it is true. After the fall of the American civilization, one hopes that his book will be found among the rubble to show that not everyone fell for the cultural bottom-line.

Rating:
Summary: Mostly entertaining.
Review: Some of what Steinberg writes about has already been done to death by the media ("Oprah" and "McDonalds") plus he is just plain wrong in at least one instance (while it is true that most adults who abuse their children were themselves abused, it is not true that all or even most of these adults inevitably go on to abuse their own children). I also disliked his double-standard with regard to fat: apparently it's okay as long as you are male and don't weigh more than Steinberg himself does. However, the book is certainly worth reading, the sections on "Advertising," "Bureaucracy," "Idiot," "Litter," "Quackery," "Traffic," "UFO's," "Yugoslavia," and "Zealots" are insightful, humorous, interesting and well-written. My favorite chapter, "Computers," is laugh-out-loud-funny in places, in particular the part on Socratic dialogue in AOL Lobby 35. It's a good book for an evening or for reading aloud during a car trip.

Rating:
Summary: Marvelous writing; hilarious insights
Review: Someone gave me this book as a birthday present, and I let it collect dust for several years because I hadn't heard of the author and the cover of the book had a straight-to-the-bargain-bins look about it. Well, shame on me, because this book is fabulous. The author is an extremely clever wordsmith, and his descriptions and analyses of various "modern annoyances" are laugh-out-loud funny, largely because they are so dead on. This book reminds me of SPY magazine (which I *loved*) and makes me want to read everything else the author has written (even the book about college pranks--a topic that holds absolutely no interest for me).

Rating:
Summary: Hit and Miss
Review: Steinberg worked in advertising at some point in his career. I'm in advertising myself, so I can relate. His book seems like something written by someone in advertising-pretty strong concept, and writing that makes it obvious the author thinks he's very funny. In this book, he lists, from A-Z, annoying things, each with a little essay on it. Like listening to anyone complain, it depends on the topic. For instance, I enjoyed the chapter "A is for Advetising," mostly because it's true. Likewise, I agreed with "D is for Disney" and "M is for McDonald's" and "O is for Oprah." I hate those things too, and it's fun to complain about them. But maybe 18 of the letters of the alphabet were either things I didn't care about one way or the other, or just not funny. But it's a good-looking book, a nice size for a bookshelf.