Wednesday, May 15, 2013

Awful Book

Steve Goodman, Sonic Warfare, MIT Press, 2012.

How any editor let his by is a dark mystery I do not want to explore.

Cultural criticism can be written clear. Consider Neil Postman. This, however, is replete with:

1. Convoluted sentences, some of which approach comedy in their pretentiousness.
2. Adjectival overload
3. Adjectival meaninglessness
4. Over use of adjectives such as "deployed," which is also misused.
5. Compound words without hyphens, most of which are unintelligible.
6. Over use of other sources. The author seems to have no original ideas. Or, if he does, I have no idea what they are, given the maddening opacity of the writing.

One could go on, but why bother with this execrable exercise in ugliness?

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