Fables of Abundance: A Cultural History of Advertising in America

Rating:
Summary: Does American History End in 1900?
Review: Advertising has become ubiquitous, on television, in the subway, on web pages, even on clothing. Even our ideas and opinions, religions and romances, have become commodified, slanted, and marketed. And most of the flood of commodification is the product of the postwar communications boom. Before 1950, one had newspapers, magazines, radio, and the occasional newsreel. Before 1900, one had placards and fliers.

So why is this book exclusively about the 19th century? The 19th century deserves 1 chapter, not all 400 pages. I am only vaguely interested in P.T. Barnum, but fascinated by how Tony the Tiger recreated American breakfasts during the Baby Boom. Or if Lear wanted to aim his book at historians, why the audacity to title it "a cultural history of American advertising"? It omits the most interesting eras of American advertising.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent, and counterintuitive
Review: Most people find advertising very irritating. This is not only understandable, but necessary and just. But what is it about advertising that should put one's teeth on edge? It is easy to believe that advertising encourages a world of greed and gaudy consumerism, a life of sterile self-indulgence. This was the view of the great American critic Thorstein Veblen. But one should avoid this temptation. In this book Jackson Lears provides a book that is not only revelatory about advertising but will help the reader about culture, nostalgia, memory, even life itself.

Lears, a historian who is not afraid to quote Marxists, agrees with Adorno that Veblen's attack on consumerism was an "attack against culture." Veblen represented a puritanical producerism that did not recognize the aesthetic and imaginative elements of consumption. Lears throughout this subtle and evocative book argues that advertising did not present the triumph of hedonism, but in fact the regulation of consumption to a strict regime of productivity, a trade-off between "routinized labor and zestful consumption." The book does not follow a simple narrative. But it does provide a fascinating account with many pregant apercus about the cold presence of an inhumane positivism, as well as the flaws of both the jargon of authenticity and the New York Intellectuals conflation of politics and style. Starting with the image of the breast and the cornocopia, and going on to the illusions of the Plain speech tradition, Lears looks not only at advertisements, but also cites much literature and theory to help him along. Melville, Dreiser, James and Proust are all invoked, Little Nemo and Krazy Kat are properly praised, coming to a benediction looking at the special achievement of Joseph Cornell and his boxes. Some readers of this review may find this summary pretentious, but those who go on to read Lears will find much that is truly revelatory.

Rating:
Summary: Intellectual bricolage?
Review: ONLY BUY THIS BOOK IF YOU HAVE TO. The only reason I bought this "door stop" was because it was a required reading for one of my university cources. It's a monolith. It's large and no one can make sense of it. You need a dictionary by your side when you tackle this beast; however, many of the words used in the book are not even listed. Lears' entire perspective is based on a word I've never heard of..."bricolage". Try looking it up! The only way to find out what it means is to go ask Claude Levi-Straus himself. I think Lears should have based his perspective on clarity not bricolage.