Ad Nauseam

The average American sees something like three thousand ads a day, although they process perhaps only ten. To say that consumer culture is pervasive is to underestimate it. In Ad Nauseam: A Survivor's Guide to American Culture, Carrie McLaren and Jason Torchinksy encourage readers to think more critically about consumer culture-to consider how advertising and consumption affect them and shape how community, friendship and family are defined. Make no mistake, McLaren and Torchinksy don't believe there is anything wrong with buying and selling, but the trouble begins when the profit motive invades places it has no business being, such as schools, courtrooms, and hospitals.



Drawn partly from McLaren's magazine and blog Stay Free!, Ad Nauseam looks at how advertising works (linking a favorable, if arbitrary, image to one's brand) now and historically before examining how rampant consumerism influences individuals and their psyches. Advertising has increasingly received First Amendment protection, so sellers can advertise however they like, but consumers aren't free to get away from it.


Jonathan Lethem, writes, "In his opening salvo in the mental war against the paradoxes of Late Capitalism, George W.S. Trow proposed a motto: 'Wounded by the Million; Healed-One by One.' What the editors of Stay Free! set up inside the brilliant framework of their magazine was an arena where writers could roll up their sleeves and get cheerfully to work at shrugging off the succubus of commercial culture, for their own sakes, and for all our sakes. This book is a treasury of Trow's kind of healing."

Ad Nauseam: A Survivor's Guide to American Consumer Culture (Paperback)

By Carrie McLaren, Jason Torchinsky

$18.00

ISBN-13: 9780865479876
Availability: In the Warehouse (Usually ships to store or customer in 2-7 days. Call for time-sensitive orders)
Published: Faber & Faber, 6/2009

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