Consuming Desires: Consumption, Culture, and the Pursuit of Happiness - Hardcover

This collection of essays by an all-star roster of social critics takes a skeptical look at American and global capitalism on the eve of the 21st century. Some of the contributors, such as William Greider, are downright pessimistic: "If the world is to save itself from ecological disaster, the redemption cannot begin among the poor," he writes. "Only the wealthy few--that is, nations such as ours--have the power and the wherewithal to rescue us all from the impending consequences of mass consumption on a global scale." Most of the other essayists treat mass consumption as a mixed bag. Novelist Jane Smiley, for instance, notes that consumerism fed feminism by inventing appliances, phones, and cars--and freed women from domestic chores. "There is much talk of the emptiness of modern life, but think of emptying chamber pots of the accumulated waste products of seven or eight household members every day for the rest of your life," she writes. These pages are full of good writing and smart observations. Bill McKibben, for example, suggests that "instead of defining ourselves by what we buy, we define ourselves by what we throw away." Other contributors include Alex Kotlowitz, Edward Luttwak, and Juliet Schor, as well as editor Roger Rosenblatt. All told, Consuming Desires is an eclectic mix of thought-provoking essays on the culture of materialism. --John J. Miller

A learned assault on the present global addiction to things. PBS and Time magazine essayist Rosenblatt (Coming Apart: America and the Harvard Riots of 1969, A Memoir, 1997, etc.) assembles a stellar cast of contributors to argue against consumerism, the credo exemplified by the obnoxious bumper sticker He who dies with the most toys wins. Some of those contributors offer paeans to disappearing virtues, such as thrift and modesty; others tender modest and immodest proposals to reduce our desire for material goods, which Rosenblatt gently calls a strange basis for a civilization, but an effective one. In his introduction, Rosenblatt recognizes that he and his colleagues are swimming against the tide. After all, he notes, something like 90 percent of the American workforce is now engaged in making and selling consumer goods and services, from cheeseburgers to computers; and nearly everyone is behaving as if we had all suddenly come into Jay Gatsbys wealth, a point that Harvard-based social critic Juliet Schor underscores when she remarks, The new consumerism is . . . less socially benign than the old regime of keeping up with the Joneses, less benign because it is both more conspicuous and more closely bound with our notion of who we are, our things having come to serve as markers of social class and self-esteem alike. The essays included in this volume are of universally high quality, and there are some real standouts: William Greider examines our unwillingness to reduce waste and the forces at work against offering high-quality, durable, and affordable goods to all segments of society; Edward Luttwak ponders the new face of American indebtedness, which now, he says, has reached the unprecedented level of 89 percent of total household income; Stephanie Mills considers the moral dimensions of excessive consumption in a time of extinction and biological crisis. Good stuff, this, offering fuel for an environmentalists fire, and likely to give marketing specialists a headache. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.