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| Within the Context of No Context | 
| Author: George W.s. Trow
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press
Category: Book
List Price: $13.00
Buy New: $1.73
You Save: $11.27 (87%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  (11 reviews)
Sales Rank: 94262
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 192
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.3
Dimensions (in): 8.2 x 5.5 x 0.4
ISBN: 0871136740
Dewey Decimal Number: 973.92
EAN: 9780871136749
ASIN: 0871136740
Publication Date: March 26, 1997
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Written originally for a special issue of The New Yorker and reissued here with a new forward by the author, Within the Context of No Context is George W. S. Trow's brilliant exposition on the state of American culture and twentieth-century life. Published to widespread acclaim, Within the Context of No Context became an immediate classic and is, to this day, a favorite work of writers and critics alike. Both a chilling commentary on the times in which it was written and an eerie premonition of the future, Trow's work locates and traces, describes and analyzes the components of change in contemporary America -- a culture increasingly determined by the shallow worlds of consumer products, daytime television, and celebrity heroes. "This elegant little book is essential reading for anyone interested in the demise, the terminal silliness, of our culture." -- John Irving, The New York Times Book Review; "In this elegant, poignant essay, written with the grace of a master stylist, George Trow articulates the accelerated impermanence of American culture with a precision that is both flaunting and devastating." -- Rudy Wurlitrer; "Within the Context of No Context is a masterpiece of the century that belongs on a shelf next to Theodore Adorno's Minima Moralia and Guy Debord's The Society of the Spectacle." -- Michael Tolkin; "Within the Context of No Context may appear to be a book of the mind, for it is suffused with such a keen intelligence, but it is actually a book of the heart -- passionate, brave, and stirring." -- Sue Halpern.
Amazon.com Review
Long-time New Yorker writer George W. S. Trow first published the long title essay of this book in 1981, and it now appears with a companion piece, "Collapsing Dominant." Taken together, the two essays are a trenchant and often scathing examination of American culture. As Trow surveys the landscape, he observes that television has created a land of "no context," which it then gleefully chronicles. The many examples he cites of things he has witnessed in the mass media are alarming not for what he has seen--for we have all seen this stuff--but for the intense, and at times lacerating, insight with which he views the passing parade of frivolity. Within the Context of No Context is a slim book that does much to explain modern American society, and the thoughts in its pages will resonate for a long time.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 6 more reviews...
 Absolutely Prescient May 25, 2007
Due to its unique structure (lots of brief, choppy sections, almost stream of consciousness writing at times) this is somewhat challenging to read, but worth the struggle. Trow had a bit of a class axe to grind, but he certainly understood the impact of TV and saw the not unrelated decline of a sophisticated mass culture.
Given how much farther we have traveled in that direction, it's not hard to see why he abandoned the US and retreated to Italy at the end of his life.
The Death of Meaningfulness in American Culture April 11, 2007
A quirky diatribe against the superficiality and meaninglessness of TV, with its focus on the trivial and mindless. Trow wrote the original essay in 1980, long before PCs, the Internet, and IPods, but everything he says about how TV creates an illusion of intimacy even as actually creates ever greater distance and loneliness, separating us from one another is even more poignant in today's "connected" world.
Trow's style is deceptively simple and full of irony. It takes time to learn his cadence, but it's worth it.
Apocalypse now February 1, 2003
40 out of 40 found this review helpful
The New Yorker has turned the entirety of its magazine over to a single work four times. John Hersey's Hiroshima, Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, and Jonathan Schell's The Fate of the Earth, cautionary and apocalyptic all, were three. The fourth is this book.Within the Context of No Context went out of print almost instantly after it was published in 1980. Nobody got this book in 1980. It's a difficult read, in a voice that is diffuse, associative, and allusive, and at the same time makes direct assertions about the way things are, which few of us are comfortable reading. It's not a book that people were quite ready to read in 1980. Except for newsmen. People who made their living by drinking out of the firehose and transforming the experience into column inches understood this book right away. (These are the same people who don't need anyone to explain the first sentence of The White Album to them.) Trow put their unease into words. And for 15 years Within the Context of No Context existed in a kind of samizdat, a thick sheaf of photocopied pages handed from one reporter or columnist or editor to another. You shouldn't buy this book, ideally. Someone should give you a copy of it, Xeroxed from The New Yorker, saying "Read this. This makes sense. This makes everything make sense." 22 years later, it's much easier to read and understand, to criticize and quibble with. It's no longer prophecy. Unlike the apocalypses that John Hersey and Rachel Carson and Jonathan Schell were warning us about, the one Trow outlined has already happened. We've even gotten used to it.
brilliant and scathing and right July 17, 2001
5 out of 14 found this review helpful
one doesn't want to admit it, but trow is dead-on in this book. these aren't observations that are new in any way, but they are presented in brilliant, crystaline prose that one can't exscape or deny.
 At Least his Heart is in the Right Place August 18, 2000
17 out of 39 found this review helpful
One thing is almost guaranteed: the dumbing-down consumer- energizing mass media will always be with us. Politically, it is untouchable. It is created and owned by the left, which pretends to hate it and defended by the right, which pretends to like it. So I suppose we should treat Mr. Trow's criticism of the media like Samuel Johnson's dog. We shouldn't focus on how badly it's done, but marvel that it's done at all.Alas, it really is poorly done. Mr. Trow tries to be stylish and clever, but sacrifices reason and coherence to achieve it. He doesn't define his terms, so that his meaning is often ambiguous. In several places, one could draw two equally valid but contradictory interpretations of his text. If you look at the blurbs on the cover which praise the book, it is very clear what is wrong. Except for Michael Tolkin, the half dozen or so writers praising the book are a who's who of our brain dead media. Having John Irving lament the "terminal silliness of our culture" is like having Ronald MacDonald slam the terminal fattiness of our cuisine. And that's a pity, because Mr. Trow has some important things to say. As one who has admired Mr. Trow's work since his lovely play, The Tennis Game, these essays were very disappointing.
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