In Modernity's Wake: The Ameurunculus Letters

Michael Phillipson

Of all the books in the past ten years I've given the zero-star rating for sheer unreadability, I don't believe I've ever regretted it more than I do with In Modernity's Wake. Phillipson is a fun guy to read, has many good points to make, and has a lot of native wit, something that cultural criticism has been in desperate need of at least since Derrida. Unfortunately, it's all so firmly couched in the jargon of theoretical literature that finding the point of anything becomes something akin to an archaeological dig. Once you've found something that might contain a nugget, time to get out the paintbrush and start getting the dust away from it so you can get the general outline. More's the pity, most of what you find is going to be irreparably calcified anyway.

I would (and have, on a number of occasions) be more than willing to brave such godawful lingo-tossing. Try to read, say, Georges Bataille or Julia Kristeva without a dictionary handy and you'll find yourself drowning in a sea of legomenon, but that doesn't make their work any less worth reading. Phillipson, however, adds the maraschino cherry to this logorrhea split (with extra nuts, of course) by descending into the woeful depths of the conscious misspeller. You know the type: the person who must use 'thee' every time the word 'the' appears, or can't help but hyphenate words in order to bring out their meanings (e.g. 'dis-ease'). Yes, I do realize this is a piece of stylistic anal retentiveness on my part, but that sort of thing drives me up the wall and halfway across the ceiling. Why ruin the subtlety of a perfectly good word? And why speed up the degeneration of the American mind by consciously misspelling words? Leave that to the marketing people who have convinced us that 'ketchup' and 'donut' are the right way to spell certain food items. We don't need it from people who are supposedly writing for the cream of the crop.