You know what you can do with your Little Book Of Calm. A new self-help book has arrived, or rather "has navigated through the post-modern predicament in a profoundly superficial way", to come to the aid of the "post-hip" generation. If you want to learn how to "write texts that undermine their own authority" and "implicate yourself in every interpretation" or even "pursue multiple narratives that neither explain nor unify", you'll need to arm yourself with a copy of Life's Little Deconstruction Book. It's the only thing to be seen with down the cyber-cafe these days.
For anyone nonplussed or "identity-deficited" by contemporary popular culture up to and including those sad people who don't know whether post-modernism is the dominant cultural logic of late capitalism or merely a term to describe horrible looking buildings, this timely tome will act as a "Disposable Derrida" or even a "Foucault-To-Go". Basically, this book is for you if you answer "yes" to any of the following questions:
1: Have you been feeling lately as though you must negotiate your own identity?
2: Are you losing your critical distance?
3: Are you taking irony for granted?
4: Do you need to change your paradigms more than once every six months?
5: Do you use the term "deconstruction" without being quite sure whether it is a rigorous strategy for reversing the classic hierarchies of Western philosophy or a trendy academic parlour trick?
WHAT you will find in the manual is 365 numbered, sound-bite exhortations to guide you through the maze of modern madness. Taking number 37 as a guiding principle - "don't despair at the absurd, go with it", you'll find practical fashion advice - "dress as tourists imagine"; help in getting a new job - "present yourself as a flexible, highly skilled , short-term commodity"; handy philosophical hints - "implode metaphysics" and shopping tips - "shop as though money were a consensual hallucination". Author Andrew Boyd is a Boston-based writer, who not too surprisingly, is also a performance artist and a self-styled "subversive wit".
And, while it's a damn funny read, you can't help feeling that the real point of the book is to look at how pop-culture sloganeering has moved far from its Situationist roots and is now used as short-hand by MTV presenters and advertising agencies eager to cash in on the "youth" market. So, while you're at it, you might as well "visit the public square on your private screen", "accessorise your rebellion" and, most importantly, "confer philosophical status on linguistic gimmicks". Life's Little Deconstrucion Book (Self-Help For The Post-Hip) is published by Penguin and costs £4.99
