Article: For Common Things: Irony, Trust and Commitment in America Today.(Review)

For Common Things: Irony, Trust and Commitment in America Today. By Jedediah Purdy. Knopf 207 pp., $20.00.

TWENTY YEARS AGO the late social historian Christopher Lasch memorably lamented that American culture was turning its children into self-absorbed consumers who relished their self-preoccupation. Lasch's The Culture of Narcissism (1979) bewailed the prevalence of what he called "the banality of pseudo-self-awareness." In a crowded field, his chief examples were the trivialization of politics and art as forms of celebrity spectacle. Capitalism commodifies everything that it touches, he observed. Commercial society bombards its customers with images of consumer ...

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