Henry C. (rhclayto) - , reviewed on 2/23/2011 + 30 more book reviews

Write what you know: basic advice imparted in any writing class. Ms Postrel, writer of an economics column for the New York Times, knows widgets. In *The Substance of Style*, Ms Postrel admirably follows the maxim that serves as the title of my review: although putatively *about* style, it's really a work wholly about aesthetic widgets. Beauty (is Truth/Truth, Beauty) may be too important to be left to the aesthetes--paraphrased from the dust jacket--but it's of far too much significance to be remanded over to the economics columnists. (The philistinism displayed by the author's positive reviewers--such as Barbara Jacobs of the ALA, who writes of "Keats's 'Beauty is life, life, Beauty'"--Ode on a Styrofoam Starbucks Coffee Cup?--says a great deal.)

Is this what cultural criticism has come to? Somebody revive Neil Postman, Jane Jacobs, Lewis Mumford--anybody.

That is all ye know on earth, & all ye need to know, about this book.

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