{"product_id":"i-must-not-think-bad-mark-dery-9780816677740","title":"I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts: Drive-By Essays on American Dread, American Dreams","description":"\u003cp\u003eFrom the cultural critic \u003ci\u003eWired\u003c\/i\u003e called \"provocative and cuttingly humorous\" comes a viciously funny, joltingly insightful collection of drive-by critiques of contemporary America where chaos is the new normal. Exploring the darkest corners of the national psyche and the nethermost regions of the self--the gothic, the grotesque, and the carnivalesque--Mark Dery makes sense of the cultural dynamics of the American madhouse early in the twenty-first century.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eHere are essays on the pornographic fantasies of \u003ci\u003eStar Trek\u003c\/i\u003e fans, Facebook as Limbo of the Lost, George W. Bush's fear of his inner queer, the theme-parking of the Holocaust, the homoerotic subtext of the Super Bowl, the hidden agendas of IQ tests, Santa's secret kinship with Satan, the sadism of dentists, Hitler's afterlife on YouTube, the sexual identity of \u003ci\u003e2001\u003c\/i\u003e's HAL, the suicide note considered as a literary genre, the surrealist poetry of robot spam, the zombie apocalypse, Lady Gaga, the Church of Euthanasia, toy guns in the dream lives of American boys, and the polymorphous perversity of Madonna's big toe.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eDery casts a critical eye on the accepted order of things, boldly crossing into the intellectual no-fly zones demarcated by cultural warriors on both sides of America's ideological divide: controversy-phobic corporate media, blinkered academic elites, and middlebrow tastemakers. Intellectually omnivorous and promiscuously interdisciplinary, Dery's writing is a generalist's guilty pleasure in an age of nanospecialization and niche marketing. From Menckenesque polemics on American society and deft deconstructions of pop culture to unflinching personal essays in which Dery turns his scalpel-sharp wit on himself, \u003ci\u003eI Must Not Think Bad Thoughts\u003c\/i\u003e is a head-spinning intellectual ride through American dreams and American nightmares.\u003cb\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Mark Dery\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-10:\u003c\/b\u003e 0816677743\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9780816677740\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e University of Minnesota Press\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/b\u003e English\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 03\/01\/2014\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 336\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 0.89lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 8.50h x 5.57w x 0.81d","brand":"Mark Dery","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":44072818606335,"sku":"9780816677740","price":19.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0662\/2982\/9887\/files\/img_0eb9dc3d-69dc-4518-927b-2dee46ab26ac.jpg?v=1685444110","url":"https:\/\/www.whiterainbookhouse.com\/products\/i-must-not-think-bad-mark-dery-9780816677740","provider":"WR Book House","version":"1.0","type":"link"}